基于学前教育专业调查的贵州省电子商务学校英语课程与实施研究

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Research Background

  This investigative research, focused on exploration of the problematic issues of English teaching in a vocational school, was triggered by the unbalanced phenomena of present English teaching and requirements of education reform.Secondary vocational education occupies a very important position in China's educationsystem. It is regarded as an important subsystem in the social education system. Since the reform and opening up policy was carried out, China has issued a series of policies on vocational education which provides the theoretical support for the rapid development of China's secondary vocational education and shows China's increasing emphasis on the secondary vocational education. China's secondary vocational education is developing towards diversification, industrialization and collectivization, which can be seen from it that advent of the knowledge economy leads to the industrial restructuring and technological upgrading. The professional and technical talents graduating from secondary vocational schools have been increasingly preferred. Junior and  intermediate technical talents and high-quality workers are in high demand.Preschool education is the initial stage of China's national education. According to the  Opinions of the State Council on the Current Development of Preschool Education（2010）,preschool education is important to developing China's national economy and improving the  people's livelihood. It's clearly pointed out that preschool education is an important component of  the national education system an an important social public welfare undertaking. With thecontinuous improvement of the education level, people pay more and more attention to preschooleducation. Particularly parents have an increasingly strong desire to give their children a good earlychildhood education. As a result, the quality of preschool education has attracted more and more  attention from families and the whole society. It has become an important matter relating to social  stability, harmony and equality and affecting the quality of the social public service system.Preschool education has become a major livelihood project that can promote the social developmentand the construction of a harmonious society. The preschool education specialty in secondaryvocational schools account for a large proportion in the preschool teachers trained by all preschoolteacher training institutions. Therefore, in order to cultivate preschool education talents needed bythe society, we should attach great importance to the construction of the preschool educationspecialty in secondary vocational schools.With the deepening of the reform and opening-up policy, as an international language, Englishhas spread and developed rapidly in China. English learning has become the craze among all theChinese and the trend of children learning English at a younger age is apparent. English is acompulsory course in secondary vocational schools. whose mission is to improve students' culturalliteracy, cultivate their ability to apply English at work. Particularly for preschool educationstudents in secondary vocational schools, to have English competence is an important way to  improve their professional qualities and the cross-cultural communication skills.  Guizhou E-Commerce School (previously known as Guizhou Business School) is a full-time  national key vocational school of finance and economics established in 1952. In order to adapt to    the needs of the market, the school set up the preschool education specialty in 2012. Its preschool  education students amount to 500, accounting for 30% of the total students. Preschool education has  become one of the school's leading specialties. In order to attract more students, the school has  increased the investment in the hardware for pre-school education students, increased the  enrollment of the teaching staff and enlarged the proportion of specialized courses. Compared with    the increasing status promotion of the preschool education specialty that is badly needed in today’s  society, the development of the English course in this school is lagging far behind. According to the  school's Talents Training Program of Preschool Education Specialty, English should be offered to  the students in grade one as a public basic course to train students' English listening, speaking,  reading and writing skills and their ability to use English at work after graduation. For the students   in grade two, English Education for Preschool Children should be offered as an optional specialized  course so that the students can systematically comprehend the English teaching knowledge and   skills needed in their future job. However, the actual situation is that the English course is only   offered to the preschool education students in the first year. In the following years, in order to  ensure the students to have solid specialized knowledge and skills, only the specialized courses are  offered to the preschool education students. Under the arrangement, the English teachers feel it  difficult to implement teaching, while the students are also dissatisfied with English teaching. After  one-year learning, the students’ English basic skills are not improved a lot, and the English teaching  situation is worrying

Chapter Two Literature Review

  This chapter is related to the definitions of some basic concepts, relevant theoriesand previous  researches abroad and at home. The definitions are clarified to make sure the range of the research;  the important theories are expounded as the guide for the research; Previous related researcheshome and abroad are reviewed for reference.

2.1 Clarification of Basic Concepts

  Some concepts that were adopted in this research, such as Secondary Vocational School,English for General Purposes (EGP) and for Preschool Education as English for Special  Purpose (ESP), are clarified first of all to set the scope of this research.
2.1.1 Preschool Education Specialty in Secondary Vocational School

  Vocational school provides vocational education with academic qualifications. It is divided  into secondary vocational schools and higher vocational schools. Secondary vocational school  is a  school where vocational education is carried out on the basis of completing junior high school education(Liu chunsheng &Xu changfa,2002). Secondary vocational schools train intermediate   skilled workers, whose graduates are skilled talents (Quan Bing,2005). At present, secondary  vocational schools in China mainly recruit junior high school graduates and offer two types of  courses, public basic courses and professional skills courses.Preschool education refers to the “education during the earliest phases of childhood, beginning  in infancy and ending upon entry into primary school at about five, six, or seven years of age (the  age varying from country to country)” according to Encyclopedia Britannica. In China Preschool  Education Specialty is under the discipline of education with a target of training preschool teachers  at college or university level and vocational school level. In this research, the preschool education  specialty refers to the education of preschool teachers in the secondary vocational school.

Chapter Three Research Design

  This chapter presents a detailed description of the research design which includes the choice of research methods and tools, the way of data collection and data treatment, and the steps of carrying  out the investigation.

3.1 Research Objectives

 This research was attempted to identify problems in the English course for preschool educationstudents and to probe into the causes of the problems with the course designand the classroomimplementation. Finally, the teaching effects would be examined to prove whether the English washelpful for the preschool education students to achieve the training objectives of preschool teachers.To keep the research on the right track, three questions in line with the research objectiveswere raised as follows:

(1)What are the problems in the English course design? And what cause the problems?

(2)What are the problems existing in English implementation? And what cause the problems?

(3)What about the teaching effect? Dose the English teaching help the preschool education

students to achieve the training objectives of preschool teachers?

3.2 Research Participants

 The research was to be done by an investigation on English teaching situation in GuizhouE-Commerce School. 278 preschool education students aged from 15 to17were from in Grade oneand two and they had learned English for over three years before they entered the school. NineEnglish teachers all took English classes for preschool education students. Five of them aged over40 years old have taught English for more than 10 years. The others just graduated from universitytwo or three years ago and they were not normal majors.They were chosen as research participants in this investigation and required to give theirresponses to the questionnaires and interviews.

Chapter Four Data Analysis and Discussion

  This chapter is to present the results of investigations and make the analysis of the data, duringwhich the present situation of English teaching in the preschool education specialty of GuizhouE-Commerce School will be revealed. After that, a discussion on the existing problem of theEnglish course and teaching will be made and possible causes of problems will be probe into.

4.1 Implementation of the Investigation

  The investigation wascarried out from three sources: the questionnaire survey, the classroomobservation and interview.The first collection of data derived from the questionnaire survey. 9 copies of questionnaire forthe English teachers were handed out and collected on Jun. 9, 2017. After screening, all theretrieved copies were 100% valid. The number of the preschool education students in grade one andtwo were 278. Some students were absent from class or asked for leave, therefore, 243 copies ofquestionnaire were distributed and collected on Jun. 5, 2017. After screening, 210 copies of questionnaire were retrieved, with rate of 86% in validity. All the data from the questionnaire werecalculated and presented by percentage in statistics.As for the second source, classroom observation provided descriptive data. The classroomobservations were carried out from 19, Jun. to 23, Jun. The author attended 4 classes of 4 Englishteachers and made records of each class in the observation form. After the observations, all therecords were presented in qualitative description.The third source of data was interview. The face-to-face interviews were carried out from 26Jun. to 7 July. The author interviewed 6 English teachers and 8 preschool education students, duringwhich the interviewees’ answers were all recorded by cellphone. After the interviews, all the recordswere transcribed in written form and then presented in qualitative description.

4.2 Analysis of the Data from Three Sources

4.2. 1 English Course Design

  English course design has to follow an English syllabus because it is the guide for Englishteaching, which includes course objectives setting, course arrangement and the choice of teachingmaterials. So first of all, in order to find out whether the English course was designed and taughtunder the directions of the English syllabus for secondary vocational school, the questionnaire wasset for teachers with the question in the following table with the statistical results of teachers’responses are given in percentage.

Table 4.1 Teachers’ Understanding of the English Syllabus

English course in the preschool education specialty is a general course, and it is designed basedon English Syllabus For Secondary Vocational Schools (2011). According to the table 4.1, 78% ofthe teachers know the syllabus, but 11% of the teachers think there was no unified English syllabus and 11% of the teachers know nothing about it, which indicates that most of the English teacherswould follow the syllabus to teach the students basic knowledge and skills. While a few of Englishteachers have no idea about the syllabus at all, it is obvious that they do teaching in their own ways.

Chapter Five Conclusion

  Through the analysis and discussion on the existing problems and the causes, this chapterpresents major findings of the research, from which the implications are mentioned for pedagogicaluse and further consideration of the English curriculum reform and other possible effect of theresearch. However, due to the limitations, many problems on other aspects of English teachingremain to be probed in future research.

5.1 Research Findings

Under the guidance of the related theories and literatures, the research findings are offeredrespectively on English course design, the implementation of English teaching as well as theteaching effect, aiming at helping English education reform and improving the quality of theEnglish teaching of preschool education specialty of Guizhou E-Commerce School.First, due to the lacks of systematic theoretic guidance and in-depth practical investigation,the teaching management of Guizhou E-commerce School is out-dated and there exist manyproblems with English course design of preschool education specialty, such as no specific Englishobjectives, the improper course arrangements, the textbook with no professional characteristics,which results in the fact that the present English course design does not play a satisfactory functionto meet the requirements of preschool teachers’ overall development.Second, there is a gap between the teacher’s teaching implementation and their teachingdesign, and it mainly results from the English teachers’ weak consciousness of self-professionaldevelopment and the lack of motivation for the analysis of the students’ need. Eventually, theEnglish teaching is not centered on the students and cannot meet the students’ career need.Third, English course is mistaken for a general course rather than ESP course in the preschooleducation specialty, therefore, the evaluation criteria on the students tend to be on the acquisition ofbasic knowledge and skills, which fails to fully examine the students’ English learning and does notcontribute to the need in improvement of the students’ career quality.