Research on Optimization Design of English Homework in Junior Middle School under the Background of Double Reduction

: The "Double Reduction” policy was issued in July 2021, emphasizing the need to comprehensively shorten the total amount and duration of homework, and reducing students' excessive academic burden, so as to improve the quality of school education and teaching, and make homework assignments more scientific and reasonable. Homework after class is an important part of school education. Students' high-quality completion of homework is not only conducive to improving the efficiency of learning, but also conducive to reducing students' learning pressure and psychological burden. After class homework management is not only an important subject of school education and teaching, but also a key issue in the comprehensive reform of education. Over the years, students' heavy learning burden has become a hot issue of general concern in society. The state has also issued policies to reduce students' learning pressure and burden. The traditional homework design is basically in the form of reading and writing, with a large amount of tasks, and it is very single and mechanical. For a long time, the reduction of students' learning initiative and enthusiasm will inevitably have a great impact on improving students' comprehensive quality. Therefore, in order for primary and secondary school students to grow up healthily and use English flexibly, it is necessary to realize English teaching with higher standards. We should always pay attention to the physical and mental development of students and promote them to become a person with all-round development. The promulgation of the "Double Reduction” policy will inevitably have a certain impact on junior high school English homework. Whether the current junior high school English homework design implements this requirement needs to be carefully considered. Therefore, this paper starts from the actual situation of junior high school English homework design, finds out the problems in homework design, and analyzes the main reasons, so as to better promote the implementation of the "Double Reduction” policy.


Introduction
In the past, students' learning was usually based on the extension of class hours in the school, the tactics of exercises and the after-school training. However, under the background of "double reduction", the path of improving learning efficiency by competing for time and tutoring has come to an end. It is urgent to improve the efficiency of classroom teaching, demand quality from the classroom, and improve students' learning performance. "Double reduction" challenges the traditional classroom teaching mode. We need to focus on the physical and mental development of students as the goal, and promote students to become an all-round person.

Background of the Study
In today's world, the trend of economic globalization and world multipolarization is becoming more and more obvious, and international competition is becoming increasingly fierce. As we all know, economic strength and science and technology are important factors to measure a country's comprehensive strength, knowledge is an important cornerstone of economic development and scientific level, and is the basis for a country's prosperity. Therefore, the country pays more and more attention to education, and the cultivation of talents is also paid more and more attention. Cultivating students' English core competence conforms to the trend of the times and shoulders the mission of the development of the times. This paper expounds the new understanding and new views on English course learning. It not only emphasizes the communicative and instrumental nature of language, but also advocates the gradual development of students' comprehensive language ability through English learning.

Significance and Purpose of the study
At present, the national literacy work has been basically completed! It makes the family which has already tightened its strings more anxious. The former "fractional theory" has deeply affected the learning, family, teachers and schools. If children do not learn well, they will be scolded by their families, criticized by their teachers, and discriminated and excluded by their classmates. It is easy to affect the health of minors and break out the conflict between children and children. Children will also become more humble. They have no faith in children. They will deny children by scores and finally abandon them. This doubt will destroy the children's life. The promulgation of the "double reduction" policy is an impact on the society, schools and families. More yardsticks are used to measure learning. Return to the essence of education and promote the development of learning, morality, intelligence, beauty, body and labor. The future development of a person depends very much on his character, not only his study. To reduce the burden after school, it is more conducive to cultivating children's interests and hobbies, exercising their abilities and personalities, and forming good living habits. Similarly, moral character is also very important for children. The "double reduction" policy has pressed the pause button for educational chaos such as "overspeed", "overload" and "internal scroll". The Ministry of Education has promoted the implementation of this policy in order to let children shape a sound personality and become a healthy personality.

Introduction to Definition
Homework is a very broad concept. It is widely used, but there is no unified definition in China. Extracurricular homework refers to the learning tasks that students independently complete after class. The purpose is to test students' mastery of knowledge learned in class (Hornby, 2010). The Education Dictionary says that homework has two basic forms, namely homework and extracurricular work. Extracurricular homework refers to the tasks that students complete to improve their grades and achieve their learning goals. The process of completing homework is a process in which students exert their independence, autonomy, exploration and creativity. Many experts and scholars expressed their views on the definition of homework and interpreted it from different perspectives. Sharon (2008) interpreted homework as "homework is an extracurricular autonomous learning activity for students and an important part of teachers' teaching activities". In a word, the author concludes that, first of all, homework is an important teaching activity designed by teachers to help students improve their grades and achieve their learning goals. Secondly, homework can help students explore knowledge independently and develop good learning habits.
English homework is an important activity to achieve the teaching goal with students and teachers as the main body. Lam (1996) understood its connotation from the perspective of activity value. English homework is an activity designed by teachers. It guides students to learn basic English knowledge, exercise skills, and improve their interest in English. He attaches importance to the purposeful and planned accumulation and application of knowledge under the guidance of teachers, and believes that homework is the fundamental way to improve students' quality. Under the background of the core competence goal of the subject, the communicative function of English curriculum has become increasingly prominent. In education and teaching, the role of English as a communicative tool should be emphasized.
Design is the process of conveying vision through reasonable planning, careful planning and various forms of feeling. This is a purposeful creative act. The design of English homework is based on a variety of theories and integrates various factors in the homework process. It aims to improve teaching activities, teaching quality and achieve teaching objectives. It is a process of scientific planning and overall planning for teaching, teachers, students and other factors. English homework design should reflect the background of the times, highlight the characteristics of the times, give play to students' subjectivity, promote students to understand and express language in a rich and diverse context, and improve students' comprehensive literacy (Doyle&Barber, 1990). First of all, the design of English homework should be based on the actual needs of students' ability development. It should not only pay attention to the accumulation and enrichment of language knowledge, but also cultivate students' self-confidence and sense of achievement in this process. Secondly, the design of English homework should follow the law of students' physical and mental development and the characteristics of the subject, and pay attention to the comprehensive cultivation of students' language, culture, thinking and learning ability. In this way, homework can not only help students learn and use language, but also enable them to understand many different philosophies, sociology, psychology, natural sciences and humanities, learn to respect and understand cultural differences and social diversity, and realize English teaching of humanities. (Chen & Stevenson, 1989)

Studies on the English Homework Design Abroad
To some extent, the positive role that homework can play depends on the number of homework. As for the number of assignments, the author finds that it is difficult to define it accurately in foreign studies. Most experts and scholars use "working hours" to measure workload. Cooper (1989), an American scholar, collected a large amount of data on the amount of homework of American students, and concluded that junior high school students should complete three to five extracurricular assignments every week, and the homework time every day is about 0.54-0.89 hours. In Canada, students before the age of 9 basically have no homework; Children aged 10-11 work about 0.5-0.75 hours a day; Students aged 12-13 work about 0.75-1 hours a day. In addition, many experts and scholars have conducted a lot of analysis and discussion on the correlation between the amount of homework and students' academic achievements. Most studies show that the amount of homework is positively related to students' academic performance, but this correlation is not permanent and will change with students' grades. Homework has a positive impact on students in grades 6-12. Cooper and James (2000) studied the correlation between them. They found that there was an optimal amount of work. A proper amount of homework can improve students' performance. Too much or too little can have a negative impact on performance and impact.

Studies on the English Homework Design at Home
In recent years, students' excessive academic burden and excessive learning pressure have gradually aroused widespread concern in society. The "sea question tactics" and "fractional theory" are still prevailing. This kind of teaching concept is easy to create learning pressure for students. In order to improve their performance, some teachers regard students as containers for receiving knowledge and mechanically instill it, which seriously harms the development of students' physical and mental health. In order to solve the problem of excessive academic burden, all parts of the country have actively formulated corresponding policies to ensure the all-round and healthy growth of students. Wang and Zhang (2014) investigated the implementation of homework at the basic education stage in Shanghai in 2013 in the book Dialysis Work -Research Based on 30000 Data. The results showed that 53.7% of middle school students completed homework for more than 1 hour every day, 20% of them completed homework for more than 2 hours, and 7.5% of them completed homework for more than 3 hours every day. It can be seen that the time required for students to actually complete their homework far exceeds the time stipulated by the Ministry of Education. According to the survey, the average time of students' extracurricular work exceeds 0.5h, sometimes even reaches 1.32h. Generally speaking, students' workload is the first step to "lighten the burden". However, few people will consider the relationship between the quality and quantity of students' homework. Song (2013) proposed that at present, Chinese students' homework forms are single and repetitive, the content of homework is tedious and boring, and the way of homework is simple. Although some studies have shown that there is a certain correlation between the number of assignments completed and the improvement of academic performance.

Research Instruments
Questionnaire Questionnaires are collected by asking participants some simple but important questions. The author uses two sets of questionnaires, one for students and the other for teachers, to understand teachers' and students' cognition of homework from five different aspects. The questionnaire is mainly designed according to the theory of the new curriculum standard in 2011. Interview The author randomly selected 10 students from Grade 8 and interviewed them respectively. During the whole interview process, students freely answered questions and expressed their opinions according to the interview outline in a relaxed and happy atmosphere, without any induction or suggestion. At the same time, the author also interviewed teachers according to their schedule. The teachers actively answered the questions raised in the syllabus and shared many valuable experiences on homework design in combination with their own teaching practice, which is of great help to the author.

Research Questions
At this stage, the content of English homework in junior middle school is narrow and single, which is a more prominent problem from the perspective of students' growth experience. In addition, the design of homework lacks flexibility, and unified homework is too formal, which violates the principle of teaching students in accordance with their aptitude and is not conducive to the overall development of students. According to the survey of homework content, 43% of teachers will choose auxiliary exercises, accounting for about half of the total; 28% of teachers think their homework is basically a textbook; Only 13% of teachers think that sometimes they will design homework according to teaching needs. Most teachers believe that after class exercises with exercise books and textbooks can reduce their workload, and they do not need to over study and hard thinking; Some teachers insist that the quality of some assignments is relatively high, which can help students consolidate knowledge. However, they ignored the actual level and individual differences of students in the class. It is difficult to meet the different learning needs of different students with a single unified textbook.

Findings and Discussion
The homework design of junior high school English is an important part for the learner to complete English learning tasks. When organizing English teaching activities in junior middle schools, teachers should pay full attention to homework design as an indispensable part of English teaching. Since the new curriculum reform advocates English teaching reform, the design of homework also needs to be improved.
When designing English homework, teachers need to understand the characteristics of the English subject and the learning practice of learning English, infiltrate the training of the four basic skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, and cultivate the English emotion and thinking ability of learning English in the process of achieving the integration of language and language. At the same time, the homework designed also needs to enable each level of learning to develop in the process of completing the homework. In this regard, when organizing junior high school English teaching activities, I will optimize the homework design from the following aspects

Designing homework to develop students' thinking quality
The thinking quality in English core competence is not a single thought, but divergent thinking with the help of thought maps to cultivate students' logical thinking and innovative thinking. At the same time, teachers can provide students with the opportunity to imagine and reshape information. The quality of thinking is an important factor to be cultivated and developed. It emphasizes students' self exploration in the process of discovering knowledge, training thinking, and gradually cultivating multiple thinking abilities.
Case display: Unit 5 Education Exchange of People's Education Press. In this unit, students learn how to use the present tense and the present perfect tense: already, yet, ever, and never. The theme of this unit is about educational exchange. The thinking type of homework can be designed for students as follows: homework 1: make an advertisement poster about educational exchange. Homework 2: Design your mind map according to the content of this article. Design concept: First of all, through the use of mind map, flow chart, etc. to reorganize the text, cultivate students' critical thinking. On the one hand, it will reduce the difficulty of language learning, make the lines and contents of story lines clearer and easier to read, and stimulate students' interest in reading and learning. On the other hand, it provides students with more free imagination and open thinking space through the massive input of language materials. Secondly, writing practice aims to cultivate innovative thinking. Teachers can design simple and rich writing exercises for students according to their actual level. For example, teachers can encourage students to collect all kinds of materials and imagine the possible scenarios or results in the future. Third, in order to cultivate students' critical thinking, in our daily English teaching, teachers can recommend a large number of articles and guide them to solve problems. By reading some classic works, students can discuss this topic with their teammates. For example, EC students are required to make posters about educational exchanges, and students will discuss and further think about this topic with their classmates

Designing homework to cultivate students' cultural awareness
Cultural awareness is a very broad concept, involving not only cultural and social phenomena, but also cultural understanding and communication capabilities between different countries. It emphasizes learning different cultures by establishing their own cultural attitudes, positions, correct emotional attitudes and values, so as to deepen the understanding of cultural diversity and eliminate cultural differences. Mutual cooperation and practical application based homework can meet the needs of students and provide them with opportunities to apply knowledge and emotional expression in practical situations.
Case presentation: Unit 8 English Week of PEP. This unit mainly introduces the English Week activities of Luoxi Bridge School. Cooperative assignments can be designed for students as follows: Assignment: Please complete the chart by selecting views (such as eating habits, holidays, weddings, clothing styles, etc.) Design concept: The mutual aid and cooperation work follows the principle of interaction and reality, combining with the psychological characteristics of junior high school students, so that students can feel the charm of different cultures in the process of cooperation, communication and interaction. Second, team members can communicate with each other and help each other to complete this task. The combination of static and dynamic operations promotes mutual understanding.

Designing homework to cultivate students' learning ability
The intrinsic value of learning ability is broader than the traditional learning methods or learning strategies. It attaches importance to students' autonomous learning and learning ability. The learning ability of English core competence includes not only learning methods and learning strategies, but also students' cognitive abilities, such as students' communication and social skills, active awareness and oral communication habits. In addition, in addition to learning methods and learning strategies, students should also learn to use monitoring strategies to understand their own learning situation and learning results, so as to adjust learning strategies in a timely manner. On the one hand, teachers should fully understand students, respect students, and recognize their dominant position. On the other hand, teachers should guide students to keep learning enthusiasm, correctly understand English learning, establish clear learning goals, and adjust learning strategies in time.
Case study: Unit 3 Traditional Skills. In this unit, students learn to describe people with adjectives. Self exploration assignment: Please select an article in the reading task to complete the reading task list. Article A: Cinderella B: Uncle Bode C: Happy Prince. (These three articles are selected from the Collection of English Stories for Junior Middle School Students. The author has provided text materials and selected reading materials.
Design concept: The learning ability in English core competence refers to the personal essential quality for students to face the social survival and development. Self inquiry homework is to hope that students can independently complete reading tasks and reading exercises. After teachers and students communicate, share answers and proofread the answers in class, students can reflect on the existing learning problems and adjust their learning strategies in time.

Designing homework for developing students' language ability
By deepening and consolidating students' basic knowledge and understanding of the content learned in class, cumulative homework can achieve their goals. Students need to comprehensively understand knowledge and develop the ability to summarize information by consulting articles in the encyclopedia. First, the accumulation of language. It can be divided into two parts. One part is the accumulation of diversity and substantiality of language materials, such as the mastery of basic vocabulary, important sentence patterns and grammatical structures. The other part is the accumulation of language rules, covering various grammatical rules in language application and learning. Second, emotional accumulation. As we all know, classical literature is an important way.
The writer expresses his emotions. By reading and appreciating the classic works, students can have a spiritual dialogue and resonance with the author, so as to enrich their emotional experience and correct their position by understanding the author. The last is the accumulation of ideas. Junior high school students are too young to obtain knowledge reserves, life experience, mature mentality and understanding of life. Therefore, teachers can guide students to establish their own values and positive emotional tendencies. Teaching reflection: After completing the assignment, students learned to use the Internet or other learning media to improve their understanding of Edison, Koala Confucius and Panda, and learned to solve problems independently. For the top students in the e-commerce class, most students can imitate the articles in the textbook and briefly introduce the experience and achievements of Edison or Confucius. For middle grade students, they will use adjectives such as cute, cute and friendly, and use a few words to describe koalas and pandas. For students with learning difficulties, they know how to download some key information of the article and use 3-4 sentences to express their views. Most of them reported that, first of all, they admit that homework is not difficult, because they are familiar with these articles from their daily life and learning experience, and can only complete them in 20-35 minutes, which greatly reduces the burden of homework.

Conclusion
English learning stage in junior high school is a very critical period. It is not only necessary to lay the foundation of English, but also to lay the confidence in English learning. Therefore, when evaluating students' English homework, we should affirm their efforts and not let them feel that they are wasting their efforts. Start with the advantages and then transition to the disadvantages. Let students know themselves correctly and what they need to make up for. Let students find their own mistakes, guide them to start from the question stem, then recall relevant knowledge points, and then judge whether their answers are correct. This is more suitable for one-to-one teaching evaluation, giving teachers and students more opportunities for learning and communication, and also taking more time. Teachers can communicate with each student on homework in self-study class to improve their thinking ability. In a word, in the development of English teaching activities in junior middle schools, teachers should design diversified homework, such as life homework, knowledge consolidation homework, etc., and on the basis of mobilizing students' enthusiasm for homework, make them grow in the completion of homework, and improve their English learning level and ability.