Review on the Impact of Homework Amount on Chinese High School

Students' Learning

Lipeng Song

School of Southeast Asian Studies, Guangxi Minzu University, Nanning, 530000, China

Keywords: Homework Amount, Chinese High School Students, Learning Effectiveness, Optimal Homework, Homework

Management.

Abstract: In China, high schools often assign a large amount of homework. High school students, who are in a critical

period of physical and mental growth, are easily affected by the amount of homework. This study focuses on

homework amount and high school students' learning effectiveness. The results show that Chinese high school

students generally have a large amount of homework with a single type, especially in key classes. There is an

optimal amount of homework, and too much or too little homework may affect students' learning. Excessive

homework leads to various negative outcomes. Insufficient homework cannot consolidate knowledge and

improve abilities. Teachers should vary homework, manage time, address differences, and guide self-learning.

Research can develop dynamic models and analyze exam reforms' impact on homework and learning. The

study can expand to areas with weak educational resources, compare urban-rural differences, and improve

homework feedback for effective tutoring and high-quality high school education.

1 INTRODUCTION

In the Chinese education system, high school

education, as a crucial bridge connecting compulsory

education and higher education, has always attracted

much attention. However, behind this high level of

attention, schools and teachers are under tremendous

pressure. On the one hand, in order to stand out in the

fierce National College Entrance Examination,

schools strive to improve the enrollment rate to shape

their own brand image. On the other hand, teachers

face the pressure of performance assessment, and

their teaching achievements are closely related to

personal career development. In this context, many

high schools tend to assign a large amount of

homework, hoping to achieve "qualitative change"

through "quantitative change". However, high school

students are in a critical period of physical and mental

growth. Under the pressure of a large amount of

homework for a long time, they are extremely likely

to feel tired and anxious, their learning enthusiasm is

damaged, and they may even develop a negative

attitude towards learning. Therefore, it is of great

significance to deeply explore the internal

relationship between the amount of homework and

high school students' learning effects for optimizing

educational practice, protecting students' physical and

mental health, and promoting their long-term

development. This paper uses the literature review

method to explore the impact of homework amount

on Chinese high school students' learning.

2 INTRODUCTION OF

RESEARCH OBJECTS

This study focuses on two key variables: the amount

of homework and the learning effectiveness of high

school students. The amount of homework refers to

the total quantity of various learning tasks that

teachers assign to high school students after class

according to the teaching syllabus and course

objectives. Its scope is extremely wide, including not

only common written homework (such as exercise

book questions and test papers of various subjects,

which are used to consolidate the theoretical

knowledge learned in class), but also various practical

projects (to cultivate students' practical operation and

problem-solving abilities). In the actual measurement

process, the time students spend on these homework

tasks is generally used as the main indicator. Further

subdivision, the amount of homework can be divided

into objective homework amount and subjective

homework amount. The objective homework amount

342

Song, L.

Review on the Impact of Homework Amount on Chinese High School Students’ Learning.

DOI: 10.5220/0013984900004912

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Innovative Education and Social Development (IESD 2025), pages 342-346

ISBN: 978-989-758-779-5

refers to the actual quantity of assigned homework,

while the subjective homework amount refers to the

students' perceived homework burden, which is

affected by factors such as individual learning ability,

learning efficiency, and interest in homework.

Learning effectiveness refers to a series of observable

and measurable results achieved by students through

activities such as knowledge acquisition, skill

cultivation, and thinking development in the learning

process (such as academic performance, knowledge

mastery, thinking ability, autonomous learning ability).

These results not only reflect the current learning state

but also concern future development potential.

3 THE SITUATION OF HIGH

SCHOOL HOMEWORK

AMOUNT IN CHINA

Xie (2008) research shows that due to the pressure of

college entrance examination, Chinese high school

students generally face a large amount of homework

and need to spend a lot of time on it. 78.53% of the

students spend 3-4 hours completing extracurricular

homework every day. In addition, the types of

homework are relatively monotonous. As many as

66.34% of the students think that written homework

accounts for 80 - 90% of all the homework assigned

by teachers, and there is fewer practical homework.

Chen et al. (2014) selected three high schools in

Ningbo City by convenience sampling method, and

then randomly selected 103 subjects from each grade

of senior one, senior two, and senior three in each

school. They collected data by questionnaire survey.

The survey found that most high school students

spend more than 1 hour on homework, and even

10.7% of high school students spend 4 hours on

writing homework every day. 67% of high school

students felt that they could complete the homework

every day, but they needed to work hard. Only 5.8%

of high school students could easily complete the

daily homework. Chang & Guo (2011) selected 70

high school freshmen from a high school in Yongfeng

County, Jiangxi Province, and conducted a

questionnaire survey on the issue of homework

amount. The survey results showed that 78.6% of

high school students thought that the homework

amount was too much or relatively large, 21.4% of

high school students thought that the homework

amount was moderate, and no high school student

thought that the homework amount was small.

Compared with the homework amount in the

compulsory education stage, as many as 90% of high

school students thought that the high school

homework amount had increased a lot, only 10% of

high school students thought that the homework

amount had not increased much, and no high school

student thought that the high school homework

amount had decreased compared with that in junior

high school and primary school. Hou (2020) research

investigated the freshmen in a key high school

science competition experimental class during the

first year of high school. The results showed that the

students had to spend at least 4 hours and 30 minutes

completing the homework from Monday to Friday,

and at least 4 hours and 50 minutes on weekends.

Most students needed 6 hours to complete all the

homework.

In the research on subjective homework amount,

Xie (2008) found that most students thought that

compared with liberal arts homework, mathematics,

physics, and chemistry homework were more

difficult, took more time to complete, and were more

difficult to finish. Among 673 high school students in

Shenzhen, 78.75% of the students thought that

mathematics was difficult, followed by chemistry

(65%) and physics (30%), while the proportions of

students who thought that politics, Chinese, history,

and geography homework were difficult were only

11.25%, 10%, 6.25%, and 2.5% respectively.

Through interviews with high school students, it was

found that the reason why high school students

generally thought that mathematics, physics, and

chemistry homework were difficult was that these

subjects combined many knowledge points, the

knowledge system was relatively complex, and they

needed to recall them one by one. Solving a problem

often required careful consideration. In addition,

mathematics, physics, and chemistry homework

required a lot of calculations, and the question types

were relatively flexible.

Through a series of related studies, a common

phenomenon can be found. That is, regardless of the

grade, students generally report that they need to deal

with a large number of written homework with high

difficulty when facing academic tasks. These

homework tasks largely occupy students' a lot of

after-school time and bring them considerable

learning pressure. When further focusing on the

homework amount of students in key classes for in-

depth exploration, the research results show that the

situation is worse. It can be inferred that compared

with ordinary class students; key class students may

indeed bear heavier homework tasks. The main

reason behind this may be that the teaching mode of

key classes is often guided by higher academic

standards.

Review on the Impact of Homework Amount on Chinese High School Students’ Learning

343

4 THE IMPACT OF HOMEWORK

AMOUNT ON STUDENT

LEARNING AND THRESHOLD

EXPLORATION

Studies by Muhlenbruck et al. (2000), Pllana (2022),

Xu (2008), Chang et al. (2014) and others have shown

that there is an optimal amount of homework. When

this amount is reached, students' learning effects are

the best, and too much or too little homework may

affect students' learning. Liu (2015) research

explored the threshold of a reasonable amount of

homework. She selected students from the high

school department of a district school in Shenzhen to

issue questionnaires. Statistical data analysis showed

that the upper limit of the time when high school

students felt that the total homework of all subjects

was moderate every day was 3 hours. 45.3% of high

school students thought that it was moderate to

complete the homework within 1-2 hours, and 37.8%

of high school students thought that it was moderate

to complete the homework within 2-3 hours. When

the amount of homework exceeded 3 hours, the

proportion of students who felt that the homework

was too much increased from 37% to 75.5%.

Therefore, high school students should complete the

homework of all subjects within 3 hours every day.

Excessive homework has a significant negative

impact on students' learning. Chang et al. (2014)

investigated and analyzed 2342 students and found

that there was a negative correlation between the long

time spent on homework and foreign language course

performance. This negative correlation was

consistent in different languages and performance

measurement indicators (the GPA given by teachers

in the six ordered parts of the course and the

standardized ability test scores at the end of the

course), and it was still significant after controlling

for potential covariates (such as language learning

talent, demographic variables, and emotional factors).

This indicates that after considering other factors that

may affect performance, the long time spent on

foreign language homework still has a significant

negative impact on performance. Excessive

homework will encroach on students' individualized

learning time. Taking language learning as an

example, students need to participate in

individualized activities, such as oral practice, but

excessive homework may lead to students lacking

enough time to carry out these activities, thus

affecting their learning performance. In addition,

excessive homework may also weaken students'

autonomous learning ability, making students overly

dependent on the tasks assigned by teachers and

lacking opportunities for autonomous learning, which

is not conducive to cultivating autonomous learning

ability. Too much homework will also compress

students' extracurricular activity time, making them

have no time to participate in extracurricular activities

that can stimulate creativity or improve social and

teamwork abilities. The learning channels are only

limited to the classroom, resulting in their inability to

acquire more extensive and diverse extracurricular

knowledge, thus hindering students' all-round

development. Hu (2001) compared the daily lives of

middle school students in China, Japan, and the

United States and found that nearly 70% of Chinese

middle school students did not participate in any

extracurricular group activities, and only 10.5% of

Chinese high school students joined extracurricular

sports activity groups (34.5% of Japanese high school

students and 53.3% of American high school

students). Chang & Guo (2011), Xie (2008)

emphasized the adverse effects of excessive

homework amount on the physical and mental health

of high school students. A large amount of

extracurricular homework encroaches on high school

students' sleep time, and their bodies are in a state of

fatigue for a long time, which is not conducive to the

absorption of knowledge. When students are

overburdened, they may develop a rebellious

mentality, lose interest in learning, complete

homework by copying from each other, and even

have phenomena such as weariness of learning and

dropping out of school.

Insufficient homework also has a negative impact

on students' learning effectiveness. Zhang & Chen

(2004) research pointed out that insufficient

homework amount could not achieve the goal of

consolidating, clarifying, deepening, and absorbing

knowledge for students. In this case, students'

knowledge acquisition only stays at the surface level,

and it is difficult to deeply understand its essence, let

alone use it flexibly. In addition, the knowledge

forgetting rate will also increase significantly.

Moreover, Pllana (2022) proposed that homework

helped students to study learning resources more

independently and cultivated students' self-discipline

and sense of responsibility. Since homework is

carried out regularly, students can choose a suitable

time at home to complete the homework in a planned

way. When students study at the same time every day

and every week, learning will become a part of their

lives. Too little homework amount may lead to

students' lack of autonomous learning awareness and

time management ability. When the amount of

homework is too small, students do not need to

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reasonably arrange the time to complete the

homework, and it is difficult to develop autonomous

learning awareness and good time management

habits. They may waste the remaining time at will

after completing a small amount of homework instead

of using the time to preview, review, or expand

learning. This may reduce students' learning interest

and motivation. When students easily complete the

homework, they cannot experience the joy of success

through efforts to overcome difficulties, lack a sense

of achievement, and then lose interest and motivation

in learning, and their learning enthusiasm decreases.

5 CONCLUSION

Current research shows that there is a significant

correlation between high school students' academic

burden and their learning effectiveness. An

appropriate amount of homework can positively

promote learning effects and help students

consolidate knowledge and improve skills. However,

when the amount of homework exceeds a certain

limit, the learning effectiveness will not increase but

decline. Specifically, an excessive homework burden

will occupy a large amount of students' after-school

time, leading to physical and mental exhaustion,

which may then trigger learning burnout, negative

behaviors such as perfunctoriness and

procrastination, and reduce the efficiency of

knowledge absorption. On the other hand, it can be

inferred from current research that excessive

homework may compress the space for students'

autonomous exploration and thinking, limit the

development of their innovative and critical thinking,

and is not conducive to the improvement of students'

comprehensive qualities. When the amount of

homework is too small, students lack sufficient

practice opportunities, which limits the application

and expansion of knowledge, making it difficult to

achieve the goals of strengthening memory and

deepening understanding. The mastery of knowledge

only stays at the surface level, and the forgetting rate

is high. Insufficient homework also makes students

unable to experience the sense of achievement after

overcoming difficulties in the learning process,

affecting their learning enthusiasm.

In the assignment of homework, teachers should

focus on diversifying the types of homework,

increasing practical homework such as experiments

and investigations, cultivating students'

comprehensive abilities, and reducing the repetitive

and mechanical content in written homework. The

homework time should be controlled within 3 hours,

and the homework time of each subject should be

reasonably allocated to avoid excessive homework in

a certain subject. Teachers should pay attention to

individual differences among students, understand

their learning abilities, interests, and subject

advantages, and make personalized adjustments to the

difficulty and amount of homework. Teachers should

guide students to reasonably arrange their homework

time and cultivate their autonomous learning

awareness and time management ability. For

example, teachers teach students how to make a

learning plan and encourage them to self-monitor and

evaluate their learning effects to improve learning

efficiency.

Future research can focus on constructing a

precise homework amount model, comprehensively

considering factors such as students' learning styles,

subject characteristics, and psychological states to

dynamically adjust the homework amount. At the

same time, it can combine the dynamics of the college

entrance examination reform to analyze the changes

in homework amount and students' learning

effectiveness under different subject combinations. In

addition, the geographical scope of the research can

be expanded to include more areas with weak

educational resources and compare the differences

between urban and rural areas. Deepen the research

on the homework feedback mechanism to achieve

rapid feedback and effective tutoring, so that

homework can truly serve the growth of students and

contribute to the high-quality development of high

school education.

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