Small class teaching: Teaching Chinese language in primary schools

The essence of small class teaching lies in the implementation of the six main teaching elements: 'setting .a learning goal, developing questioning skills, student participation, group cooperation, giving feedback and assessment for stimulating learning'. These elements show that the core value of small class teaching is to reaffirm that students have the ability to structure their own learning, and to place focus on the initiative of the student. Teaching reform during the millennium stressed on 'learn to read and read to learn", 'using one text for multiple teaching purpose ', etc. Such changes in the aim of language teaching also brought about corresponding changes in teaching methods. This presentation points out that in order to train language teachers for small class teaching, teachers need to have a thorough understanding of the new aim of the teaching curriculum, especially in teaching reading, as well as students' mentality towards language learning. This way, the results of small class teaching would be much more effective.