Title: Survey of High School English classroom communicative activities——in Taiyuan Shanxi Author: Zhai Jianhong Tian Jinping

The aim of this study is to find out the present states of CLT in high school English classrooms: 1.Teachers’ knowledge & treatment of CLT 2.Teacher and students’ attitudes towards CLT 3.Whether authentic communicative activities exist in high school English classes

Research method: 1. Teachers’ Questionnaires 2. Students’ Questionnaires 3. Classroom observation 4. Interview

Procedure of the research 1st stage: Design questionnaires 2nd stage: Hand out the teachers’ and the students’ questionnaires , then collect them 3rd stage: Do classroom observation, after class, interview the teachers. 4th stage: Analyze the data

Sample of the research The subjects of questionnaire for the teachers are 86 English teachers, 46 of them are from 3 senior schools --one factory-subsidiary school, one city common school and one city key school, and the others are selected randomly from other 10 high schools.

Sample of the research The subjects of questionnaires for the students are from 7 high schools in Taiyuan, including 2 key city schools, 2 enterprise-subsidiary schools and 3 common city schools. They enrolled in high schools in the autumn of 2003 or 2004. The sampling techniques used here is systematic random sampling. The schools were chosen randomly in each group (key, ordinary or factory-subsidiary) and the student who has a single enrolled number in a single numbered class was selected to fill in the questionnaire.

Sample of the research The subjects of Class observation and interview are the same. They are chosen randomly from a city common school, a city key school and a factory-subsidiary school.

Findings Results in Ss’ questionnaires: Results in teachers’ questionnaires:

Results in Ss’ questionnaires: Activities occupies most of the class

Results in Ss’ questionnaires: 90% of Ss expect their errors be corrected by the time of occurrence Teachers use both ways in explaining the grammatical rules teachers use every means to help them understand not all the questions put by the teachers have got ready answers

Results in Ss’ questionnaires: Possible cause of difficulty in speaking

Results in teachers’ questionnaires:

Results in classroom observation and interview Non-communicative activities are teachers’ favorite, in the lessons observed, teacher’s beliefs and teaching techniques play a very important role in this process. Calls for change in teacher training to help teachers promote their abilities in designing a communicative task.

Suggestions: 1. Modify our present testing system 2. Amplify teachers’ ability of designing tasks and their knowledge of CLT 3. Put emphasis on cultivating teachers’ beliefs and showing more practical ways in applying communicative theories in teaching.

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