Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of the research
The contents of the 18thNational Congress of Communist Party of China layemphasis on the development of educational enterprise and the reform of elementaryeducation. At the same time, the 18thNational Congress of CPC vigorously promotes theconstruction of ecological civilization and the concept of ecological civilization should befirmly established in the whole society. These requirements highlight the importance andurgency of the construction of ecological environment. It also can expand ecology ofeducation.The outline of national medium and long-term education reform and developmentplan (2010-2020) has put forward views like cultivating students’ independent studyability, autonomous learning ability and promoting diversified development in ordinarysenior high school. And following the principle as “student-centered, teacher-led”; givefull play to the initiative of students; to promote the healthy growth of students as thestarting point and the foothold of the school’s all work. Taking care of every student; topromote each student to develop actively and lively; respect for the law of education andthe law of students’ physical and mental development; provide appropriate education forevery student. So this study will be suitable in this time in term of the above outline.The study is under the guidance of New English Curriculum Standards and based onthe concept of New English Curriculum Standards for direction, which particularlyemphasizes to improve students’ thinking and expression abilities in English. At the sametime students should have the preliminary practical writing abilities and are required towrite the common applied literary form in senior high school.
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1.2 Significance of the research
In this research, the existing teaching problems of English writing class in seniorhigh school will be studied and try to construct ecological classroom of English writing teaching in senior high school and to provide a new mode for the study of teaching theoryfrom ecological perspective. Meanwhile, constructing the system of ecological classroomon English writing under this perspective will lay a solid foundation for the furtherenrichment and development of teaching theory. To teacher, it is conducive to the improvement of the teaching efficiency in seniorhigh school English writing class. English language teaching is a kind of theoretical andcommunicative discipline. The traditional teaching mode of teacher-centered has manydisadvantages, which leads to inefficient, invalid or even negative effect of teachingpractice in English class in senior high school. On the contrary, eco-classroom willchange this kind of situation.To student, they will learn more in the eco-classroom with the harmonious classroomatmosphere. With more interests in writing and desires to express their own ideas, alsogood relationships with teachers and classmates, writing skills and abilities of studentswill be slowly accumulated.
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Chapter Two Literature review and theoreticalfoundation
2.1 Definitions
In 1866, German zoologist Haeckel (Haeckel, E.) gave “ecology” a relatively cleardefinition, namely “the relationship between the organism and the surroundingenvironment” (Wu & Zhu, 1998:2). The meaning of the English word “ecology” refers tothe relationship between the organism and its environment around each other. It isobviously that the basic elements of “ecology” are life and environment; its nature is“relation”. With the development of ecology, “ecology” extends froma biological term tovarious fields, and it also represents a new world outlook and methodology, a new kind ofscientific thinking. Today, the word “ecology” has been used in various fields, such as“ecological politics”, “ecological economy”, “ecological culture”, “ecologicalpsychology”, “ecological teaching”. It represents many meanings, like “balance”,“variety”, “open”, and “harmony”etc. The definition of classroom is divided into broad sense and narrow sense. Frombroad sense, the classroom is the place where a variety of teaching and learning activitiestake place. From narrow sense, the classroom refers to the place where we carry outteaching activities by means of transferring, transforming and constructing knowledge,aiming to help students to master knowledge, develop intelligence and ability, cultivatemoral character, and develop personality (Li et al., 2011:56). In view of the form, thenarrow classroom includes: classroom teaching, extracurricular activities, visiting etc.This paper focused on the classroom teaching.
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2.2 Overseas studies and studies in China
The terminology of ecology of education was first put towards in the book named“Public Education” by L.A. Cremin who is the former president of Normal College ofColumbia University U.S in 1976. And then English scholar J. Eggleston has published The Ecology of the School which is mainly about distribution of education resources. TheEcology of Human Development was written by U.Bronfenbrenern who has put forwardmany theoretical assumptions. Western ecology of education studies spread in differenteducational levels. Until now it has formed a relatively complete theoretical system at themacro area.Since 1932, Waller. W the American education scholar first proposed “ecology ofclassroom” in his book Sociology of education. The ecology of classroom is themicroscopic level of ecology of education. Although the concept has been proposed in1932, actually its study abroad began in 1960s. Until now there are abundant researchachievements of ecological classroom in specific content, target groups, research methodsand so on.The abroad study content mainly focused on classroom environment and behaviorsof classroom life. Study groups were mostly students in primary and secondary schools, atthe same time, they concerned about “vulnerable groups” including special educationclassroom, kindergarten classroom, older students classroom. (Sun & Xie,2006) Itreflected the deep sense of the concept of inclusive education and lifelong education.Research methods attach great importance to the real situation and emphasize natural andqualitative approach to the research. Such as, Smith began to use ethnography method tostudy ecology of classroom as early as in 1969.
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Chapter Three Research design ......... 12
3.1 Participant of the research........... 12
3.2 Content of the research .......... 12
3.3 Purpose of the research.......... 13
3.4 Research methods ............. 14
Chapter Four Application of Ecoclassroom Englis h writing teaching ...... 17
4.1 Natural environment ........ 17
4.2 Humanistic environme nt........ 21
Chapter Five Result analysis and discussion ...... 29
5.1 Result and analysis of questionnaires ........... 29
5.2 Result and analysis of intervie w........ 38
5.2.1 The first intervie w in the early stage of the experime nt ....... 39
5.2.2. The second inte rvie w in the late stage of the experiment .... 40
5.3 Case analysis before and after the experiment ........ 41
5.3.1 Case study before the experiment ....... 41
5.3.2 Case study after the experiment.......... 42
5.4 Result and analysis of pretest and posttest...... 44
Chapter Five Result analysis and discussion
5.1 Result and analysis of questionnaires
Questionnaires were distributed to two classes which are total 108 students. Somequestionnaires are invalid; at last we get 100 valid questionnaires to analyze. Here are theresult and analysis of questionnaires. Q1: From the data we can see that more than 93% students don’t have much interestin English writing; nearly half students don’t like it at all, which directly influencestudents’ English writing enthusiasm and initiative. Therefore, the premise of inspiringstudents’ English writing enthusiasm and initiative is to cultivate students’ English writinginterest.Q2: Students rarely practice English writing every day, which are only 2% students;78% students write an English composition every week; 12% students write every two orthree weeks; and 8% students write only an English composition in a month or so. Thecondition indirectly signified that teacher didn’t attach great importance to students’English writing at extracurricular time.
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Conclusions
The eco-classroom of English writing teaching is an ecological system, in whichteachers, students and environment influence or communicate with each other. Therefore,studying the research of English writing teaching in senior high school from theperspective of ecology is reasonable and feasible.After four months’ experimental study on the English writing teaching, the analysisof the questionnaire’ data, the analysis and summary of students’ interview and classobservation, and focus on the revision and reflection of eco-classroom of English writingteaching, students improve their interests in English writing, change their attitudes towardEnglish writing class and there are more interactions and communications betweenstudents and teachers. At the same time, the scores of students’ writing composition twicebefore and after the experiment of the experimental class and the controlled class iscollected and use SPSS 17.0 software to compare the differences. Through this study, wecan get the following conclusions:
1. Through questionnaires and classroom observations, the researcher found that inthe class of English writing teaching in high school, there still existing many problemswhich didn’t conform to the new English Curriculum Standard and the current situationof English writing is not optimistic.
2. Comparing and analyzing the data out of students’ two times tests pre- and post-the experiment, we can ensure that students improve their writing marks obviously, afterthe teacher employs eco-classroom of English writing teaching.
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Reference (omitted)