Since the 1980s, English course has been offered in primary school in some economically developed areas in China, which has accumulated a lot of successful experience and has laid a good foundation for the primary school English classroom teaching nowadays. However, English course is offered in rural areas in the conditions like the lack of English teachers and teaching resources, which unavoidably lead to some problems in the English teaching of primary school that can be summed up as follows: (1) the lack of the English teachers; (2) the English teachers’ insufficient knowledge and limited competence; (3) the single teaching objective, which ignores the cultivation of pupils’ innovative ability and the cooperative spirit; (4) overemphasis on the language knowledge, which pays little attention to what the pupils have learned their life experience, which is not conducive to the cultivation of pupils’ ability to use English flexibly to communicate with each other effectively; (5) teacher-centered teaching method, with which the pupils learn English passively, which is not conducive to stimulate the pupils’ English learning interest and enthusiasm; (6) the lack of effective communication and interaction between teachers and pupils, so the teachers are seldom concerned about the pupils’ attitude, emotion and the formation of value; (7) insufficient teaching resources in rural primary school. All the above-mentioned problems seriously restrict the development of English classroom teaching in rural school. Therefore, in the premise of following the physiological and psychological rural primary and secondary school pupils’ characteristics, it is necessary and urgent to return the classroom to the pupils, to pass the learning initiative to them, to cultivate their co-operation and competitive consciousness, to improve their language competence and innovative competence and to change the class teaching radically so that the English classroom teaching in primary school can be full of vigor.

Guided by the theories of the new curriculum, this paper hopes to explore an effective way to improve the English teaching quality in rural primary school and promote the pupils’ development through the investigation of English classroom teaching situation in rural primary school and analysis of the causes of the existing problems.

This paper mainly adopts literature research method, questionnaire survey method, observational method and statistical analysis method to collect the related materials and data. And this paper is pided into five parts. Part one is the introduction, in which the importance of offering English class and the existing problems in English classroom teaching in primary school are discussed and analyzed. Part Two, Part Three and Part Four are the paper body, which investigates the current situation of classroom teaching in rural primary school, analyzes the problems existing in the English classroom teaching in rural primary school in detail and then put forward countermeasures respectively. Part Five is the concluding part.  

II. The Current Situation of English Classroom Teaching in Rural Primary School

   English teaching in primary school is an elementary one, what the children learn and the competence they acquire at this stage will affect the rest of their life so education in primary school is the fundamental one, which is important to improve the quality of the entire nation and our spiritual civilization and which is the cornerstone of the education development. Therefore, the significance of English classroom teaching in rural primary school can not be underestimated.