Chapter 1 Introduction
Primary and secondary schools in China usually divide students according to their age. They learn as a group in a class at school. Th e fact that differences exist among students is indisputable, but the traditional class-based teaching system cannot really solve the issue on individual differences of students. For exam ple, there is always a h uge difference of students in English classes when they just enter junior middle school. This problem has always been troubling educators who teach Eng lish. It is o ne of the most dif ficulties in teaching.
1.1 Research Background
English teaching must be student-centered, which means it aims at the basic goal of all the students while respecting the level dif ference among them. The course has a certain selectivity in order to improve the correspond ing English ability of each student and to ensure students adapt to pers onal accomplishment during the modern development. These clearly point out that we should use different teaching strategies on students with dif ferent levels of English for a suitable developm ent of their learning. Many scholars and first-line English teachers have always been doing practic al researches on how to teach th e students with level difference. Since the 20th century, Hu Xinghong(2003) et al. first purposed the research on Stratified teaching. As the rese arch deepened, stratified teaching h as been developed in many regions in China. The author taught two grade 8 English classes in this school year. Since there were not m any students in the whole grade, the school did not use any form of stratified teaching. However from the analysis of the students’ actual situation, there was a large difference of English level between students even though there were only 33 students in each clas s. The difference between the highest and lowest grade was more than 80 points. T o compare vertically, the En glish level in m y school is average in the whole district. S tratified teaching ef fectively improves students’ English level, individualized teaching and improves the English level of the students who has poorer basic English. Stratified teaching creates more learning opportunities for the outstanding students, expands their learning content and strengthens their learn ing level and competitiveness. There is a profound significance in improving the competitive strength of the school in th e district and promote the popularity of the school.
........
1.2 Research Significance
Through the practical research of S tratified English teac hing, it helps to increase students’ interest in English learning, promote classroom teaching efficiency, train students to have a good learning habit and lessens th e level gap between the students in order to improve students’ academic level. Teachers set corresponding English learning goals to the stud ents at each level under the premise of fully understanding the studen ts’ English ability . In English teaching, teaching strategy and teaching process are relevantly adjusted so that students at each level can learn well in class. Therefore, the unified English learning situation is changed, where the outstanding students can already understand English and the students at a lower level have to “accompany for study”. Through the im plementation of stratified English learning, the teacher m akes the students find pleasure in learning and become better at learning by whether improving the students’ subjective learning attitude or to further adjust a learning method, which helps to fully develop each student’s potential. The outs tanding students can achieve considerable
