IMPROVING THE MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS’ READING ABILITY THROUGH THEIR INTERESTS

1、利用興趣提高中學(xué)生英語(yǔ)閱讀水平improving the middle school students reading ability through their interests摘要本文從英語(yǔ)語(yǔ)言教學(xué)的角度出發(fā)， 研究了中學(xué)閱讀方面的問(wèn)題。 與同類研究相比，本文旨在突出研討中學(xué)英語(yǔ)教學(xué)中總計(jì)教學(xué)的重要性。我們的主要研究目的包括如何利用興趣有效提高中學(xué)英語(yǔ)閱讀興趣愛(ài)好水平， 本文共由四個(gè)部分組成。我們首先簡(jiǎn)單介紹了閱讀教學(xué)中的一般情況， 然后提出了興趣愛(ài)好理論用以驗(yàn)證興趣愛(ài)好同閱讀之間的關(guān)系。 此外， 我們還討論了必要的背景知識(shí)和閱讀技巧與閱讀理解和速度之間的關(guān)系。最后我們得出了利用興趣，掌

2、握必要的背景知識(shí)和閱讀技巧，可以提高學(xué)生的閱讀水平的結(jié)論，以此結(jié)束了全篇的討論，本項(xiàng)研究發(fā)現(xiàn)以上三個(gè)要素是影響中學(xué)生閱讀能力的主要因素，本項(xiàng)研究可望對(duì)相關(guān)研究產(chǎn)生積極影響，這些影響主要體現(xiàn)在通過(guò)上述三個(gè)因素的控制，我們可以設(shè)計(jì)一種整合型的教學(xué)方案，促進(jìn)和發(fā)展中學(xué)閱讀教學(xué)，提高學(xué)生的閱讀能力。關(guān)鍵詞： 英語(yǔ)閱讀, 學(xué)習(xí)動(dòng)機(jī), 背景知識(shí), 閱讀技巧 語(yǔ)言教學(xué) abstracti examine the reading issue from a language teaching perspective. different from previous research, this paper wa

3、nts to emphasize the importance of motivation in the study of reading at a middle school. in what follows, i want to know how to enhance the ability of students in reading (reading skills, speed and result). there are four parts in this paper. i start with a brief introduction to reading, then we pr

4、opose a motivational theory to testify the correlation between interest and reading. an additional discussion of necessary background knowledge, reading skill and speed in reading is also provided. we end the study with the conclusion that students reading comprehension can be greatly enhanced by th

5、eir motivation development, mastering of the necessary background knowledge and skills. i found in our research that there are three major factors influencing learners reading ability. based on these findings, it may be conduced that if we want to improve students reading ability, we have to first d

6、eal with the issue of motivation development, necessary background knowledge and reading skills. some useful implications obtained from this study include that due attention should be paid to the interplay of the above-mentioned three factors.key words: language teaching; motivation; reading trainin

7、g;background knowledge; reading skills.contents1. introduction-1 2. literature review-13. problem analysis-1 4. project objective-25. project hypothesis-26. project rational-3 7. reading lesson design -48. project implementation-59. data analysis -610. evaluation-8 11. conclusion -8appendix a questi

8、onnaire one for problem analysis-9 appendix b worksheet-note-10 appendix c worksheet-guessing the meaning-11appendix d worksheet-filling in the blanks-12 appendix e questionnaire two-the post-trial questionnaire-13appendix f teaching material-14bibliography-151. introduction in learning a language,

9、especially a foreign language, reading is a very important link. we can get information from passages through reading; i have taught english in middle schools for three years. in final exams, the marks of reading are about one third of all the marks. but most of the students are afraid of reading. t

10、hey are so nervous that they dont want to read the passages as soon as they see them. so they do worse and worse in reading. some students cant do reading tasks well because of their limited vocabulary, some because of the absence of necessary knowledge background, still many of them dont have the i

11、nferring and judging ability according to the context while reading. they know every word of the sentence. let alone the real meaning according to the whole passage. of course, others cant understand because they dont know the real meaning of a certain word in the sentence. that is to say, they have

12、nt mastered the word which may have more than one meaning. all these factors lead to their ability to understand the text. so they feel dull to do reading tasks. they cant intentionality read. how to enhance the reading ability through organizing reading class well is very important. how to enhance

13、the effect of teaching, training the reading ability is an important question. some scholars pay a lot of attention to the theory of reading. much work has been done about these questions: what elements do reading comprehension involve? whats the relationship between the background knowledge and the

14、 language in reading, etc. 2. literature review usually reading is taught passively. the students are not keen on it. they just read it because they have to. generally teaching of reading can be divided into three kinds. they reflect the three stages of the development of reading theory. firstly “bo

15、ttom-up” pattern was produced in the 1960s. it was in accordance with the article. it was from lower words decoding to obtaining information. the representative figures were d. labergem, s.t.samuels, p.b.goughect. the second is “top-down” pattern, which was formed in the end of 1960s and the beginni

16、ng of 1970s. it was in accordance with cognition. i stressed the effect of the readers background knowledge in reading. it is thought that reading is a process choosing, predicting, testing and versifying. it was a game of psycho-linguistics. the representative figures were k.s.goodman, f.smith, t.h

17、udson etc. the third one is “interactive” pattern. it was proposed by d.e.rune in 1977. it is thought that reading is not only a process of “bottom-up” or “bottom-down” scheme is the basis of reading. of course, each pattern has its own benefit.3. problem analysis before i begin to design my new tea

18、ching plan, i would like to find out the reason why some of my students feel that it is difficult for them to do reading comprehension. i try to find the answers from three respects: the teacher, the students and the class size, and we should choose the right teaching materials, neither too difficul

19、t nor too easy for them.3. 1. the teachers side i have taught english for three years. after reflecting on my teaching experience, i find most of my classes were taught by old-fashioned teaching methods by which i myself learned english. that is to say when i was a student, my teacher used these met

20、hods to teach me and now i use them to teach my students. in class, i spend much time in explaining the meaning of the sentences, new words and grammar points. when i listened to the recording of my lesson i found i did most of talking in class. i found i did not give much time to my students to pra

21、ctice what they learned and give them few opportunities to read. i did not realize the problem until i learned the course english language teaching methodology. “traditional methods of learning a foreign die hard. (alexander.94) that is true.3.2. the students side from questionnaire one (see appendi

22、x a), i know what the students think of the reading task. the following are the main reasons why they do not like reading the text. some weak-learners lacked confidence. they think their english is poor and they do not quite understand some words and sentences in the text, even if they know the word

23、s. they lack logical, assuming and reasoning ability, so they cant understand the txt exactly.some students lack the necessary historical and geographical knowledge, even if they can read the passages, they cant do the multiple correctly.many students told me that when the content of the text was no

24、t familiar to them, they felt that they didnt want to touch it. some do not think it is necessary to read in class. they think they only learn the basic language knowledge, and they neednt do more reading. a few students think reading in class is a waste of time. the teacher should tell them more im

25、portant things about reading strategies in class.3.3. the size of the class the class size of 39 students might have some negative effect. it is impossible to give every one the chance to tell the meaning of the passage. the few chances for students to read may be given to those who do not want to r

26、ead while the other may never have the chance to practice reading, they may do irrelevant things in class while others are learning. all these reasons make the students unable to read on their own initiative, so the reading class hasnt got any effectiveness.4. project objective enhance the interest

27、in reading and reading ability by initiative reading. if they arent interested in it. they wont calm down to read or do any reading comprehension exercises.5. project hypothesis it is hypothesized that the students reading ability is increased by initiative reading. if they wouldnt like to read, how

28、 can they get the correct meaning about it!6. project rational of course there are many factors in initiative reading. i especially mention the three factors below. 6.1. interest-the firstly important factor of initiative reading interest is very important in learning english. interest is very espec

29、ially important to english. this is because there is to many things to remember. what more, they live in a native language environment, they can get less information through english. so it is difficult to keep the interest in english. its impossible to learn english well without adequate interest. e

30、instein said “interest is the best teacher”. we can classify interest into three kinds: direct, and stable. we must arouse the students interest from various aspects. for example: the situation of society, using real object tools and stick figures, choosing the humorous passages, english parties etc

31、. through these ways, i can arouse the students interest in english and make them learn english imitatively.6.2. necessary background knowledge will promote initiative understanding it is not uncommon that sometimes when you take up a text in a foreign language, you recognize every word but still fa

32、il to grasp its meaning. what is problem? where does the difficulty lie? lets look at the following example. defender zhang, chinas league champions dalian wanda, scored his header at the 24th minute of the second half from a corner kick. (china daily, 4-10-1997) to understand the above passage, the

33、 reader needs to have a certain amount of background knowledge in the field of football in order to understand such terms as “defender,” and “header”, and also the rules of the game, for “he second half” and corner kick”, otherwise, it may not make much sense. the background needed to interpret a gi

34、ven test is called “schema”. it originates from all the particular experience the reader has had. it is an organized structure as well, including the relationship between its component parts. “schema” plays a very important role in understanding a given text. many pre-reading activities are designed

35、 with this purpose in mind. the teachers usually spend time in activating the students existing schema or providing it if it didnt exist, before teaching a text. for example, if the students are going to read a story about henry kissinger, the teacher may try to activate their relevant background kn

36、owledge by asking such question as : “ how much do you know about henry kissinger?” they may respond by saying something they know about his their life, his political career as a diplomat, especially his role in the improvement of sino-american relations, and so on, the students ten might be told wh

37、at sort of test it is in order to predict what sort of information there will be in the text. so, if it is a biography, we expect to find details of kissingers birth and parent. if it is an article criticizing his political decisions, we would probably not expect that sort of information, but a more

38、 specialized account of his political activities. asking students to predict the contents from the topic and from the test type are examples of the structure they are familiar within certain types of texts.6.3. the initiative reading ways-skimming, scanning and inferring. skimming is not careful rea

39、ding; the reader usually moves his eyes over the text very quickly just in order to get the gist of it or to decide whether it is worth reading more deeply or not. skimming enables readers to look efficiently for something that interests them without spending too much time reading what is unnecessar

40、y or interesting. scanning means locating specific information you, the reader, want from the text, you do not necessarily follow the order of information in the passage but can go back and forth to read the part of the text to your purpose, it is a time and energy saving activity, which should help

41、 you increase your reading speed and efficiency. inferring means making use of syntactic, logical and cultural clues to discover the meaning of unknown elements. these may be the writers opinions and attitudes which are not directly stated in the text. making inferences while reading usually helps t

42、he reader to achieve a better understanding of the text. one point worth mentioning is that inferences must be made with care and supported by evidence.7. reading lesson design timetable of the project designweekstageteaching object time1preparation for readingt1.to talk something about some famous

43、men to stimulate the interests 2.to learn some background knowledge 45m2reading stage1 skimming2 scanning3 making notesto catch the main ideas of a text through skimming, scanning and note making.90m3post-reading testto do some filling blanks exercise. 45m based on the rational, the passage how carl

44、 mari studied in senior english for china (sefc) book 1b was used as my language material. new tasks are to be designed and new teaching models are to be used with the aim of providing students with a chance to catch the main idea successfully. since it is a large class, i must pay attention to the

45、following factors. 1) asking more students to say something about the famous men to arouse their interests.2) give some information about karl marx.3) from some groups to discuss the questions.4) use various types of task and reading strategies to get efficient result.i will give the students some s

46、ayings of marxs and ask more them to arouse the students will to read. i use some interesting activities to stimulate the students interest, providing them with a chance to use their imagination and creative ability i give more background information about the text to the students. in this stage, st

47、udents are asked some questions to see how much information about the text they have known. sometimes pictures or maps are shown for them to guess what will happen in the text or what the text that they are to learn is about. the students begin to read the text and come to the next page-reading. in

48、this stage students are to read the text several times using different ways: skimming, scanning, and then closing reading, each time they will be given different questions, so that they can understand the text better while reading. take the passage how carl marx studied for example, the first two qu

49、estion are: what foreign languages did carl marx study? and what work did marx do? then the scanning questions were: in what country was carl marx born and what was his native language? etc.some other activities are used in the stage, such as guessing the meaning of new words and expressions in the

50、text, making notes, listening to the tape of the text, some exercises on grammar points and so on. i choose a common class to have the experiment, they are about seventeen and in grade one of senior high school. they have mastered some basic knowledge of english, but for some reasons, some of them a

51、re not good at english and they arent interested in it, either. they especially have difficulty in reading. to enhance their interests and make them read initiatively. i design this reading class. i try to help the students to have a great improvement through my reading course.8.project implementati

52、on project implementation isnt so easy, so teachers must do a lot of preparations for pre-reading， while-reading and after-reading.week 18.1preparation for reading before students begin a few text, i would like to talk something about some famous men to stimulate their interests. we are learning eng

53、lish, we often have a great deal of difficulty in learning foreign languages. marx can grasp several foreign languages, do you know how marx studied foreign languages? in this way i arouse the students motivation to learn the text. in order to learn the text, the background knowledge is necessary, s

54、o i will spend a few minutes explaining it. usually i ask them some questions or ask them to talk about the pictures on the book. when i taught the passage how carl marx studied, my question was “what do you know about karl marx?” i ask the students to tell me everything they knew about karl marx: h

55、is homeland, his native language, his books, his best friend, his grave and so on. sometimes i ask them some questions to help them. by the end of this activity, i believe that the students get more information about karl marx. week 28.2. reading stage then we come to the reading stage. in this stag

56、e, i use diverse activities to ask the students to read the text. in this way, they will be familiar with the content of the text quickly and they will learn how to catch the main ideas of a text from general to specific. the activities include skimming, scanning and note making. skimming firstly, i give students two minutes to read the text and ask them to find the answer to the question. usually the question is given right