(1)Paying Attention to Continuous Improvement in Implementing Bilingual Teaching
Adopting bilingual teaching leads to the superposition of students’ study tasks. To keep students’ interest in study, it is particularly important to have properly-developed teaching plans, focused attention to pedagogy, integration with advanced teaching approaches, weighting retrospection and improvement in teaching while making sure students are free of loss in the subject field. In Pinghe’s teaching practice, varied approaches such as inquiries, discussions, debates, and seminars are widely used in class. Realia, pictures, video clips and cases are used to create situations for vivid interactive teaching and ease the students’pressure of thinking via language. By completing homework assignments in English, essay writing, case analysis, students’ English capability and understanding of subject knowledge are strengthened. The barriers are removed and the efficiency is improved through a preview of the new words’ pronunciation, translation, and usage, for the next class. Pinghe particularly weights teaching retrospection and improvement. Generally, Pinghe encourages teachers to share their retrospection by publicizing it on the school’s network platform.
（2）School System is a Guarantee of Continuous Development of the Team of Bilingual Teachers
Bilingual teachers spend twice as much time and energy preparing bilingual teaching plans, teaching and doing retrospection. In this sense, they contribute much more. In return for this, the school rewards them with a more favorable policy on stipends for course hours, prizes for assessment, annual assessment bonus points, stipends for 2nd language training and overseas study, giving stipends to those who had learned a 2nd language before the policy came into being. All these have proved to encourage teachers to continue the good job and try to make an even greater contribution to the growth of students.
3.Development Parallel to the School Feature
（1） Set-up of the English Activity Course and Creation of the Atmosphere for Bilingual Teaching
As one of the first bilingual schools in Shanghai, on the top of Pinghe’s agenda is the English teaching as one of its school features. The primary school’s English group organize English festivity series which are significant in creating an atmosphere for the school’s bilingual teaching and introducing students to actively participate in the English and bilingual learning process. It is an important way for extensional study and an important measure for promoting the quality of English and bilingual teaching as well. Not only that it sets a stage for the performance of students’ capability, blending their study, experience, practice, participation, cooperation, and demo, but also that it enables students to develop their capability and enjoy the sense of achievement in study through these activities.
November through December each year, Pinghe’s “English Arts Festival” is celebrated with a series of rich and colorful English activities that create a platform for wonderful English performances by students from high, middle and primary school. Students use what they have learned largely from bilingual classes to compose on topics such as environmental protection and science, taking forms ranging from speaking, singing to reading and writing. These activities improve students’ enthusiasm for studying English. The English festival activities not only give the participants an opportunity to showcase their personality and talents in English, but also provide the students in the audience with a chance to enjoy the atmosphere of great performances of English.
Through years of activities, Pinghe’s “English Arts Festival” has become a brand activity of Pinghe’s primary school, and is warmly welcomed by teachers, students, and parents alike. What’s more, the festival activities in combination with daily bilingual classes have become one of the school-based courses with a pronouced merit.
（2）Promoting Students’ Societies and Clubs; Advocating Practical Bilingual Application
Pinghe is located in the Green City international community. The school actively integrates the community’s educational resources, and encourages the students to take part in the colorful community activities. For example, in one of the large-scale activities like “Long Distance Race for the New Year Celebration”“International Family Day”“Celebration of the Lantern Festival”, students from Pinghe participate as volunteers, providing services while taking it as a study platform for communication. The students won many big prizes in all types competitions of “Be Ready For World Expo And Learn Two Languages”. The activities of the high school’s “Roots And Shoots Society”“Association of the Environmentalists”“Volvo Global Youngsters”“Action Group For Environmental Protection” have become effective ways for students to learn two languages in full growth.
It is worth mentioning that through studying in a bilingual teaching environment, the students from Pinghe not only have developed their communication and English capability, but also improved their cognition of and love for the Chinese language as well as the culture heritage. In and after class, students never hesitate to speak out their love for the national culture, and their competence in Chinese is growing day by day. Pinghe has been keeping excellent scores in various tests of all levels in Shanghai, and with English we have always been among the top three. Our students’ ability for continuous study is fully recognized by schools of higher levels including those overseas.
4. Integrated Use of Chinese and Foreign Textbooks
In 1996, Pinghe put forward the slogan and concept of “Bilingual Teaching”, but unfortunately it had few respondents. Though the concept was first put forward by the government in 1999, there weren’t any related teaching materials developed or written by experts or scholars. So, the development of teaching materials became Problem Number One to be solved by Pinghe in the practice of bilingual teaching. In the process of exploration and development of the teaching materials, Pinghe had to follow a rather rugged path: from translating foreign teaching materials in the beginning to introducing foreign textbooks and developing school-based teaching materials in combination with foreign textbooks later. In this process, we have been exploring a suitable path of development, and searching for a better combination of foreign teaching materials with native Chinese culture. Pinghe has found a way of developing its own teaching materials, namely, “Walking With Two Legs”. On one hand, Pinghe encourages its teachers to utilize the Internet and foreign teaching resources, to compile teaching materials on their own; on the other, we actively and cautiously investigated on and searched for overseas textbooks for integration and effective use. They concretely begin with the following three respects:
（1）Pick from Sister Schools for Reference and Translate Native Chinese Texts
For example, in 2000, here’s what the primary school Fine Arts teachers did: translate and use the native Chinese texts based on their understanding. Due to their limited English, and the difference between the Chinese and English cultures, expressions, the effort input to the translation doubles the output work obtained. In 2001, Pinghe opened avenues for working communication with CISS and Dulwich College. The Fine Arts teachers were sent many times there to observe and study. After a comparative study of the Fine Arts texts in the international curricula, these Pinghe teachers managed to broaden their horizons in the field of Fine Arts.
（2）Developing Bilingual Teaching Materials with Help from Foreign Teachers
Purely using international teaching materials is far from enough in promoting bilingual teaching in Chinese schools. Using the resources of foreign teachers and writing school-based teaching materials proved to be another effective way. In compiling, the bilingual teachers opened up their minds, learned how to use the thinking models of mixing the East and West in planning and teaching, understood how to view the Asian topics with the western perspective, and vice versa. They also try to use the same method to guide their students, to gradually nurture the students by internationalizing their thinking mode in the process of subject study.
（3）Screening out Original Bilingual Teaching Materials Based on the Practical Situation of Chinese Students
Actively searching for, cautiously introducing, and using the original textbooks are also Pinghe’s measure for solving the shortage of bilingual teaching material. After full evaluation, Pinghe introduced “New Integrated Science (G1-G7)” published by Longman Publishing Company in 2002, to be the bilingual teaching texts of Everyday Science and Integrated Science. Through several years of exploration and effort, Pinghe now has its major bilingual textbooks of the Education Department’s bilingual version, from Hong Kong and abroad, as well as the self-developed, school-based teaching materials, to meet the basic needs of teaching. However, development and selection of teaching materials are a dynamic process in which Pinghe will keep trial with effort.
Pinghe School has been effectively implementing bilingual teaching for the last ten years. The success lies in the fact that our curriculum features a gradual transition to instruction entirely in English, moving from the experimental phase to more generalized implementation; from science subjects to arts subjects. Our bilingual curriculum is grounded in common sense, experience, and research and displays many distinguished features. Our teaching model is student-centered and regards highly their native language and culture. In actuality, there are enormous variations in implementing bilingual teaching due to the differences in areas, culture and teaching staff. Our implementation of and experiences in bilingual teaching are only one example amongst many successful bilingual programs offered by other bilingual schools. Pinghe will continue its overall aims to support students, promote their academic achievements and overall development in all the areas of the curriculum while they are trying to master two languages.
To sum up, Pinghe aims to make a little contribution to and lay down a solid foundation for the prosperity of Shanghai and the world at large in the years to come.
