Designing Strategies and Implementation of Writing Teaching in Senior High School English Classrooms from the Perspective of Alignment of Teaching, Learning and Assessment

JIANG Yuhong & XU Jitian.................................................................................3

The essence of the alignment of teaching, learning and assessment is to maintain consistency among teaching, learning and assessment in terms of teaching purposes, contents and methods, with a common focus on students’ core competencies of English discipline. In the designing process,teachers should be oriented to the core competencies, thus making clear the learning effect that students are supposed to achieve. In the implementing process, based on students’ performance, teachers should make accurate assessment and accordingly adjust teaching in time, so as to promote learning by evaluation and improve teaching by evaluation. Taking the teaching practice of the section of writing:Writing a movie review, with the module topic “Stage and screen” of Unit 4, Book 2 of senior high schoolEnglishtextbook published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press as an example, this article explores how to develop effective design of the alignment of teaching, learning and evaluation, and elaborates how to implement the practices in senior high school English writing classroom in order to facilitate the development of students’ core competencies of English discipline.

Exploring the Integrated “Teaching-Learning-Assessing” Practice of Reading and Writing in Senior High School English Teaching

GAO Huaqing.......................................12

Integrated “teaching-learning-assessing” can integrate teachers’ teaching, students’ learning, and evaluation activities guided by evaluation goals. It plays a positive role in guiding teachers to deepen curriculum and teaching reforms, achieve the goals of promoting teaching through evaluation and promoting learning through evaluation, and implement the core competencies of English discipline.Taking two integrated reading and writing lessons from Unit 1 of the People’s Education Press (2019)Grade 10 English textbook as an example, based on the text analysis and student analysis, the article focuses on the integration of “teaching-learning-assessing”, guiding students from interpreting the text to applying it in practice and eventually to innovating and achieving the teaching goal of “promoting writing through reading” from input, internalization to output. The lesson demonstrated in this article provides certain inspiration for the integration of reading and writing teaching under the framework of the integrated “teaching-learning-assessing”.

The Development and Analysis of Lexical Inferencing Strategy Scale for Senior High School Students

LI Hongyu,XIE Bing & ZHAO Xinyi................................................................20

Lexical inferencing strategies refers to the learning strategies that adopted by learners when they encounter unfamiliar words in reading and seek to make informed guesses to the meaning of these words in light of their prior knowledge. With 195 Chinese senior high school students as target, the study attempted to investigate the underlying constructs of lexical inferencing strategies via literature review, interviews and scale development. Results of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) revealed three strategies constructs: form-focused strategies, self-regulation strategies and meaning-focused strategies which significantly correlated with each other in a positive moderate degree, accounting for 51.326%of the total variance in learners’ responses to the scale items. Hence, given its good reliability and validity, the scale of assessing lexical inferencing strategies is supposed to serve as a standardized and operational tool for the exploration as well as the improvement of Chinese English reading teaching.

A Case Study of Heterogeneous Class for Pre-service English Teachers’ Teaching Ability Development

YANG Ting & MENG Chunguo................................................................28

As a common form of teaching and researching activities, the heterogeneous class is widely used in the professional development practices of in-service English teachers. This study focuses on pre-service English teachers and uses a case study method to explore the development process and effectiveness of the heterogeneous class activity. Based on the analysis of three rounds of lesson plans,lesson materials, micro-lesson recordings, discussions and reflections of three pre-service teachers, the study found that the elements of the heterogeneous class activity system interacted with each other and developed collaboratively. The agency of the subject, the driving force of the object, the mediating role of tools, and the support of the community jointly form an important foundation for the evolution and development of activities. The teaching behaviors and concepts of teachers have been improved. The former includes teaching posture, blackboard design, vocabulary teaching, and classroom interaction,while the latter covers the view of teaching design, student subjectivity, and discourse analysis.This study is conducive to improving the education of pre-service English teachers and professional development of in-service English teachers in the context of the new curriculum.

An Effective Path for English Teachers’ Professional Development: The Significance,Content and Strategies of Professional Writing

CHEN Yusong .........................................36

Professional writing is an important fulcrum and unique path of teachers’ professional development. Teachers should clarify the significance of professional writing, understand the writing content and master the writing strategy, reflect in time, summarize and write on the basis of continuous learning and practice. Combined with the author’s experience of lesson preparation, class, and professional writing process, taking the successful publication of the lesson paper as an example,this article shows that professional writing can indeed promote teachers’ professional growth. This article elaborates on the entire process of English teachers from thorough preparation before class to the smooth publication of an essay, which has some enlightenment for front-line teachers to carry out thesis writing based on lesson study.

Interdisciplinary Aesthetic Education Curriculum Design with the Integration of English and Art Disciplines: Steps and Approaches

AO Narentuya & WANG Chuhan ...44

The implementation of interdisciplinary aesthetic education is an important approach to construct an aesthetic education ecosystem. However, there is limited research and no operational framework or pattern has been formed. In view of this, this article explores the connotations of disciplinary and interdisciplinary aesthetic education, and outlines the steps and approaches of interdisciplinary aesthetic education curriculum design that integrates English and art around English picture book reading. The aesthetic education resources of English subject are mainly reflected in four aspects:theme beauty, language beauty, form beauty, and cultural beauty. Based on English picture book reading and appreciation, teachers can guide students to perceive the beauty of theme, analyze the beauty of language, appreciate the beauty of form and create cultural beauty, and organically integrate the aesthetic education elements of English and art disciplines.

A Study of the Application of Formative Assessment to Listening and Oral Teaching in Middle Schools

ZHANG Chunqing, JIANG Cheng & LI Haijing ............................................51

The English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education (2022 Edition)calls for the integration of formative assessment and summative assessment to enhance the learners’ core competencies. This article explores how formative assessment is applied in listening and oral English teaching in middle schools. Formative assessment has elicitation of evidence, interpretation of evidence, feedback and action phases with learning goals in the core to achieve the formative effect.Based on this framework and the curriculum, the assessment in middle school English teaching is categorized into three types: classroom-based assessment, homework assessment and diagnostic assessment. Finally, the authors analyzed examples of classroom-based assessment, homework assessment and diagnostic assessment, revealing the mechanism of promoting learning in teaching.

The Path of Integrating the Concept of Chinese Culture into Junior High School English Classroom Teaching

LIU Hongtou & ZHOU Wei........................................................60

It is of great significance to integrate the concept of Chinese culture, including excellent Chinese traditional culture, revolutionary culture and advanced socialist culture, into the classroom. Aiming at the problems of lack, narrowness and superficiality in the dissemination of Chinese culture in daily classroom teaching, on the basis of its three different forms of performance, this article expounds the path of integrating the concept of Chinese culture into junior high school English classroom teaching from four aspects through specific teaching cases, in order to make students initially develop the ability to disseminate Chinese culture and give full play to the educational role of Chinese culture.

Continuation Writing Teaching in Senior High School English Classes Based on Scaffolding Instruction

LIU Ling...............................................................................................67

Continuation writing is a new type of English writing test in “the new National College Entrance Exam”. This compound writing task, which is an organic combination of reading comprehension and writing, is rather tough for freshmen in senior high schools in Jiangsu Province. This article takes the continuation writing text in the first mid-term exam for freshmen in the local district as an example.Based on “scaffolding instruction”, it illustrates how to effectively construct the plot scaffold, the thinking scaffold, the language scaffold and the evaluation scaffold in the classroom teaching to help improve freshmen’s continuation writing competence. Practice has proven that this teaching model can provide a feasible way to carry out continuation writing teaching in senior high school English classes.

Probing into the Design and Practice of Prediction Activities in Junior High School English Reading Teaching

MAN Wenping & CHANG Chang...................................................77

This article takes a public English reading class as an example to explain how to design and practice prediction activities in junior high school English reading teaching. According to the teaching sequence of guiding prediction before reading, testing prediction during reading and reflecting prediction after reading, this lesson integrates a series of “predicting—reading—testing prediction—reflecting prediction—evaluating prediction” activities into reading teaching practice. The prediction activities meet teaching objectives and stimulate students’ reading interests. This article reflects on how to conduct junior high school English reading teaching, and provides suggestions for promoting students’ predictive activities while reading.

An Effective Way to Cultivate Core Competencies of English Discipline Utilizing Mind Maps in Primary Schools

WANG Huang,ZHOU Siliang & LIU Mingdong..................85

Core competencies have become the keywords in the compulsory education reform in China,making it a general trend to design and teach English courses based on the core competencies.The mind map, as a schematic tool, is a learning method that conforms to the cognitive ability of primary school students. This article takes the English textbooks in Hunan Province as an example to investigate how teachers develop students’ core competencies by utilizing mind maps in English courses based on their teaching practices. With the core competencies of English discipline as the overall goal, how teachers cultivate the language ability, cultural awareness, thinking quality and learning ability of primary school students by utilizing mind maps are illustrated, which is expected to explore an effective way to develop primary school students’ core competencies in the Chinese context.