A STUDY ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHERS’ IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NEW CURRICULUM POLICY IN COMPULSORY EDUCATION IN WEINAN, SHAANXI, CHINA
This study takes the English teaching in the compulsory education stage of Weinan as the research context, focusing on the policy practice and policy implementation of the first-line English teachers as well as the other policy implementers, including principals and inspectors, explore the implementation of the English curriculum in the compulsory education stage. It attempts to investigate the difficulties encountered by the English teachers in implementing the new curriculum, explore the factors that hinder the English teachers in implementing the new curriculum. In this study, qualitative research was used, and semi-structured interviews were conducted among four administrative inspectors, six school principals, and twelve English teachers.
The study also found that the main difficulties faced by English teachers in implementing the new curriculum were: the implementation of content and language-integrated learning, the implementation of competency-based approach, and classroom management. In addition, this study revealed the factors affecting the implementation of the new curriculum from four aspects, teacher-related factors, learner-related factors, curriculum-related factors, and factors related to management. The evidence of this study indicates that the government should not only pay attention to top-level design when formulating the new curriculum, but also to the operability and implementation of the curriculum, and provide English teachers with more specific implementing methods and skills. To help English teachers better understand the concept of the curriculum and better promote the implementation of the curriculum policy.
Keywords: English language teachers, implementation, new curriculum, compulsory education stage
