摘要

新世纪给世界各国带来的挑战以及全球化的不断加深都凸显了外语能力的重要性。在这样的背景下，一贯有着母语优势的美国也积极探索外语教育改革之路。在新世纪即将到来之际，美国颁布了《外语学习标准:为21世纪准备》（简称《标准》），因此本文以《标准》为例探讨了美国外语教育政策改革的内容、实施、成效以及问题。通过这些探讨，本文试图给中国外语教育改革提供一些参考。
本论文主要有六个组成部分。第一部分主要介绍了美国外语教育政策改革的政治、经济、文化方面的背景以及改革前外语教育的现存问题。第二部分是文献综述，介绍了《标准》的主要内容，回顾了前人对该文件的解读和研究。第三部分是本文的重点部分，主要从教师教学理念、外语课堂、评价等方面的变化探讨了《标准》的实施过程。第四部分是在《标准》实施过程中研究者针对《标准》的优点和出现的问题得出的反思。第五部分主要通过前面的研究总结了美国外语教育政策改革在内容、实施等方面对中国外语教育改革的启示。第六部分是对全文的总结，同时指出了本论文的不足，为以后的研究者提供一些建议。
通过以上研究以及对《标准》的仔细探讨，本文认为新世纪美国外语教育政策改革一定程度上增强了国家的竞争力,提高学生的外语水平，因此对中国外语教育改革有一定借鉴意义。
                           
关键词：新世纪，美国外语教育政策改革，《标准》，实施，启示 

Abstract

The challenges from the new century and the development of globalization highlight the importance of foreign language capabilities. Under this circumstance, America also starts to value the reform of foreign language education .The representative of American foreign language policy reform is Standards for Foreign Language Learning: Preparing for the 21st Century (briefly called Standards) and thus this thesis is going to analyze its content, implementation, advantages and problems to reflect this reform and to give some references to foreign language educational reform in China.
This paper mainly contains six parts. The first part is the introduction to the background information of American foreign language policy reform from political, economic and cultural perspectives and the problems of former American foreign language education are also included. The second part is the literature review, which looks into the contents and previous researches of the Standards. The third part is the main content, which discusses the process of implementing the Standards through the changes in teaching concept, foreign language class and assessment. The forth part focuses on the reflections of the Standards through its advantages and problems in implementation. The fifth part is mainly about the reference to foreign language educational reform in China based on the previous discussion and the last part summarizes this thesis, points out the limitations and offers some suggestions to further researches.
Through the elaborative analysis of the Standards, this thesis concludes that, to some extent, American foreign language policy reform in the new century has contributed a lot to the improvement of the nation’s international competiveness and the students’ language competency. Therefore, it gives some meaningful references to foreign language educational reform in China.

Key words: new century, American foreign language policy reform,Standards, implementation, reference