Design and arrangement of English homework: book recommendation on English homework arrangement

The author conducted an in-depth investigation on the assignment of English homework in senior high schools in this area, and found that many English teachers had many problems in the assignment design and assignment, which restricted the improvement of teaching quality to some extent. These problems are mainly manifested in the following aspects:

First, there are many similar operations and few hierarchical operations. From the level of homework, teachers lack the consciousness of "teaching students in accordance with their aptitude" when designing homework, and assign homework with emphasis on individuality. Few teachers really design homework for students with different cognitive levels and different ability levels according to their respective learning conditions. At the same time, they also lack scientific guidance for students to choose their own homework and methods to complete their homework independently. For example, after teaching a text entitled "Surviving Culture Shock", the teacher did not provide any reference vocabulary, word count requirements and sample paragraphs, but asked all students to "write a short essay about your imagination, your imagination, your survival and your foreign country, with the focus on the success of a class." In fact, not all students have the ability to write an exercise after reading a text.

Second, there are many exam questions and few basic questions. Judging from the type of homework, no matter which grade, the homework assigned by the teacher is similar to the Otawa exam questions, and there are many objective questions, which emphasize on pragmatics. For example, given some new language or grammar knowledge, teachers generally think that students can consolidate and digest what they have learned as long as they repeatedly arrange a large number of multiple-choice questions. In fact, doing multiple-choice questions mechanically is often not very beneficial to the development of students' language ability and thinking ability. Once they need to express and use it, their shortcomings will be revealed, and there will often be a lot of spelling mistakes in written expression and irregular writing. In this regard, in recent years, Jiangsu college entrance examination written expression that the provincial average score can not break through the passing score line is the best example.

Third, there is more consolidation work and less expansion work. Judging from the content of homework, most English homework is for students to review and consolidate what they have learned so far. Many teachers attach great importance to themselves, thinking that students can learn English well as long as they follow their own instructions. So they assign homework to everything they teach, and the vocabulary and grammar they just taught are the tasks of language teaching. Assigning homework is also limited to allowing students to complete auxiliary consolidation exercises. Starting from the basic law of language acquisition, few teachers instruct students to listen to English radio and TV programs for a long time and learn from foreigners. Develop the habit of reading English materials before going to bed every day and keeping a diary in English, thus creating a learning environment conducive to the all-round development of English language.

Fourth, there are more knowledge assignments and less skill assignments. From the goal orientation of homework, the homework assigned by teachers emphasizes the curriculum goal of language knowledge, while ignoring other goals such as language skills, emotional attitudes, learning strategies and cultural awareness. The overall goal of senior high school English course is to cultivate students' comprehensive language application ability, which is based on the comprehensive development of language skills, language knowledge, emotional attitudes, learning strategies and cultural awareness. Generally speaking, teachers who only attach importance to imparting knowledge and neglect skill training in classroom teaching usually cannot reflect the overall consideration of students' comprehensive quality. They pay more attention to homework such as reading and reciting, imitation and expression, reading and writing, but neglect to improve students' ability to obtain information, process information, analyze and solve problems in English through homework. They are not good at cultivating students' ability to think and express in English, as well as their awareness of cross-cultural communication and basic cross-cultural communication skills.

Undoubtedly, due to the above problems, students' effective completion of English homework is not optimistic. Extracurricular homework is a continuation of in-class homework and an organic part of teaching. On the one hand, English courses in senior high schools should help students lay a good foundation of English language and cultivate their basic English pragmatic ability; on the other hand, they should also pay attention to students' learning emotions and improve their humanistic quality. Teachers should not only implement this concept in classroom teaching, but also penetrate into English homework, consolidate and strengthen the knowledge and skills that students have learned in class through English homework, cultivate and develop students' self-management ability and multi-cognitive ability in English learning, and help students form healthy psychology, strong will and noble character.

First, teach students in accordance with their aptitude and pay attention to the hierarchy of homework.

As early as more than two thousand years ago, the educator Confucius put forward the educational concept of "teaching students in accordance with their aptitude". In the 1980s, babanski, an educator in the former Soviet Union, put forward his "theory of teaching process optimization", arguing that teachers should seriously study the practical possibility of students' learning on the basis of acknowledging the individual differences of students, and implement personalized teaching for students with different characteristics to achieve optimal development. In the process of teaching, teachers should design English homework at different levels for students with different English levels, so that the homework arrangement conforms to the educational law and the actual needs of students' English learning.

Based on the principle of promoting the development of students at different levels, the author has made some thoughts and practices on the design and arrangement of English homework, and asked teachers to explore the hierarchical design of homework from the aspects of purpose, content, difficulty, type and evaluation. According to the actual situation of the class, students are generally divided into three levels dynamically. First, design homework according to the learning situation of middle-level students (most of them should be), and then increase or decrease appropriately based on this. For example, after studying the teaching of "Oxford Senior High School English" (Module 6) Unit 3 Project to make reference books, the homework assigned by the author is to ask students to choose a minority area in China after class and make a travel brochure. We ask middle-level students to integrate the four aspects of the text, imitate the writing structure of the text, and complete the task of making a travel manual according to the information obtained; For students with good English level, we require that the manuals made by students must include the history, culture and customs of ethnic minority areas; The task for students with poor foundation is to let them choose one of the four aspects of the text at will, encourage them to imitate and apply the sentence patterns and phrases appearing in the text boldly, and complete the writing of the tour manual. Practice has proved that only when teachers put forward different homework requirements according to students' actual situation and let each student accept some challenging homework that is beneficial to their own study and progress can students finish their homework willingly and effectively and make new progress continuously.

Second, highlight pragmatics and emphasize the basis of homework.

Under the background of market economy, all kinds of English teaching AIDS are overwhelming, mostly in the form of examination questions, mostly multiple-choice questions. This kind of question is easy to measure vocabulary and grammar knowledge, not easy to measure language use ability, especially not suitable for basic grades, and it is also harmful to senior three students near the college entrance examination. Faced with these materials, we should boldly abandon those unscientific test questions or questions and make full use of some articles with rich thinking and language information in line with the principle of being conducive to students' progress. Teachers' time should not be used to arrange and correct a lot of mechanical homework without thinking content, but to prepare and correct some high-quality homework that can inspire students to think and consolidate their learning foundation. For example, there is a cloze in a teaching aid, which reads: A company employee was told, "Yesterday, a person who made progress in the company walked this road. We invite you to join the funeral in the stadium. " They were stunned when they saw themselves in the mirror of the coffin. The sign on the side of the mirror says, "There is a limit to your growth: that is you." Let them suddenly realize. For such an article that can shake the hearts of teachers and students, teachers should stand on the basic goal of "gestalt problem solving" Students can first solve problems according to the requirements of the college entrance examination, then refine the theme of the article, find out the sentences that point directly to the soul, and read them repeatedly until they can express themselves freely. Finally, it is suggested that students who have spare time to study should write a review on YouaretheonlyPerson, and combine reading and writing to improve their pragmatic ability.

Third, people-oriented, strengthen the autonomy of homework.

"Autonomous learning" refers to students' "self-management" of English learning process, including consciously determining learning objectives, choosing learning methods, monitoring learning process and evaluating learning results. It must meet two conditions: first, students should have certain autonomous learning ability, and second, teachers should provide students with certain autonomous learning space, both of which are indispensable. Therefore, teachers should design homework with students as the center, stimulate students' awareness of autonomous learning with scientific and reasonable homework, master the methods of autonomous learning, and then develop students' autonomous learning ability.

Based on the above understanding, the author requires English teachers in the whole region to reflect the principle of combining students' autonomous learning with all-round development in both content and form, and to provide students with enough time and space for autonomous learning and guide them to practice and use the language constantly. The English Curriculum Standard clearly requires students to "appreciate simple English literary works with the help of teachers" in extracurricular reading in senior three (grade 8), and the reading requirement for students is that "in addition to textbooks, extracurricular reading should reach more than 300,000 words." This means that a student's average annual reading during his three years in high school is at least 65,438+10,000 words. With such a large amount of reading, such a wide reading range and such high reading requirements, it is far from enough to just use classroom teaching time. Therefore, it is necessary to assign short-term assignments that are conducive to reviewing and consolidating classroom teaching content, and to assign some medium-and long-term assignments that can expand students' knowledge and improve their reading volume and level. Students should be instructed to choose suitable extracurricular reading materials according to their actual level, complete reading tasks within their planned time, and write book reviews. You can also hold reading competitions and book review competitions regularly to better promote students' independent reading. At the same time, you can also watch CCTV-related English programs for a long time and watch English film and television works regularly. So as to train your sense of language, broaden your knowledge and cultivate students' cross-cultural awareness.

Fourth, pay attention to skills and improve the humanity of homework.

The English Curriculum Standard for Ordinary Senior High Schools points out that foreign language education in senior high schools is an important process to cultivate citizens' foreign language quality, and high school students' learning foreign languages "can promote the development of their minds, emotions, attitudes and values, and improve their comprehensive humanistic quality". In my opinion, English literacy here includes: initial listening, speaking, reading and writing skills, rich language accumulation and good sense of language, cross-cultural understanding and communication level, independent thinking and cooperation ability, moral cultivation and aesthetic ability, good personality and sound personality. However, it is difficult to achieve these goals by relying on traditional working methods. Therefore, high school English homework should not only focus on reviewing, consolidating and deepening knowledge, but also aim at cultivating students' humanistic quality in homework.

After teaching the article "ShoesWithSoul" (selected from "Studio Classroom"), the author designed some situational assignments for students to choose from. Students can form cooperative groups according to their own cognitive characteristics and interest in knowledge to jointly complete one of the tasks.

Situation 1: What should we do if four classes are affected? (Hint: Is it OK for weshakehandswithhim? /Canwegivehimahug？ /canwesittother and himandhavelessons or have dinner? )

Situation 2: Before, you knew nothing about Clark's work because it was not your favorite brand. Will you buy shoes next time you see them? Why or why not? /Will you spend more money on charity than usual? Why not?

Scene 3: Last year, I went to Gambia with some English friends. In their partner school in Gambia, all students have extracurricular activities, so the school has two classes. 1 1 Class from 8:00 am to 6: 00 pm; 4 Classroom study is from 1:00pm to 6:00pm. When students are not studying, they have to work in the school garden. They are in urgent need of help. What do you think we can do to help them? Should we simply give them fish or fish? Why?

The value of these assignments is not only to help students review and consolidate what they have learned, but also to further stimulate students' curiosity and imagination and cultivate students' thinking ability and positive emotional attitude. The students like this challenging homework very much. In fact, as long as teachers focus on improving students' comprehensive humanistic quality, students' attitude towards completing homework is positive and the effect will be ideal.

(Su Changfeng and Chen Zesheng, Teaching and Research Section of Wuzhong District, Suzhou, 2 15 128)