theapplicationofstudentcenteredprincipleinenglishreading本科论文.doc

Contents
1. Current situations of English reading teaching in senior middle school (1)
1.1 Problems in current English reading teaching in senior middle school (1)
1.1.1 Lack of interest (1)
1.1.2 Failing to develop students’ communicative competence (2)
1.1.3 Lack of interaction (2)
1.1.4 Lack of moral lessons (2)
1.1.5 Failing to develop the students’ reading strategies (2)
1.2 Causes of the problems (2)
2. Student-centered method (3)
2.1 Theoretical understanding of student-centered principle (3)
2.2 Significance of student-centered principle (3)
3. The application of student-centered principle in English reading teaching in senior middle school (4)
3.1 Motivating the students’ interest (4)
3.1.1 Applying appropriate lead-in (4)
3.1.2 Using humor (5)
3.1.3 Choosing suitable materials (6)
3.2 Developing the students’ productive competence (7)
3.2.1 Combining reading with speaking and writing (7)
3.2.2 Bringing group work into reading class (7)
3.3 Increasing interaction in reading class (7)
3.3.1 Using question-answer model to promote interaction (8)
3.3.2 Increasing interaction between teachers and students (8)
3.4 Giving moral lessons while teaching (8)
3.4.1 Exploring the moral aspect from reading materials (9)
3.4.2 Emphasizing the spirit of cooperation in group work (9)
3.5 Employing scientific reading and teaching strategies (9)
3.5.1 Correcting the students’ bad reading habits (9)
3.5.2 Fostering the students skimming and scanning skills (10)
3.5.3 Teaching grammar and vocabulary in the context (11)
4. Conclusion (11)
Bibliography (12)
Acknowledgements (13)

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 Name: xxx
Class: 08.1
Number: 10
Tutor/Title: xxx/ Associate Professor
Date: 2012.6.1
The Application of Student-centered Principle in English Reading Teaching in Senior Middle School
1. Current situations of English reading teaching in senior middle school
In the society of information revolution and the knowledge explosion, texts are still the best carriers in the large volumes of information across space and time, the best media for human to transmit scientific and cultural information, the best means for long-distance communication of experience, thoughts and emotion, and also the best tools for the spreading of civilization. Hence if you intend to acquire large amount of needed information, keep pace with the times, you have to learn to read and improve your reading competence.
For senior high school students, reading is the one of major means that they get knowledge and information. And it is by far one of the most important four language skills that are listening, speaking, reading and writing. It can improve the learners’ linguistic competence. In all kinds of English tests including the college entrance examination, reading comprehension occupies the most important part. Because of these factors, teachers give prominent attention to the teaching of reading especially in senior high school. However, in the practical teaching process, the teachers’ lecture in a reading class plays an important part. The whole class is a stage for a teacher to explain linguistic knowledge with grammar translation approach. Students are just containers for the teachers to impart knowledge. The teachers ignore the central place of students in teaching activities and only pay attention to their own lectures. In this way, much work has been done to teach students to read but their reading competence still fails to improve. Also, students’ other linguistic competence can hardly be improved.
1.1 Problems in current English reading teaching in senior middle school
The current English reading teaching not only fails to improve students’ reading ability and other linguistic competence, but also has some other problems.
1.1.1 Lack of interest
The teachers in current reading classrooms are always dominant and active, directing the learning process, supervising and correcting the students’ behavior. They pay too much attention to their own lectures. The students’ role, however, is passive. They learn grammar and words through the teachers’ explanation of sentences. In this case, a whole passage is usually torn into pieces. More over, teachers, for the most part, always ignore the importance of lead-in. Through the communication with many teachers in senior high school, it is easy to find that lead-in in their mind is a waste of time. In the teaching process, teachers also always choose some materials that are out of date. Under this circumstance, the classroom atmosphere of a reading class is presumably dull. And what’s more, the students’ interest cannot be motivated.
1.1.2 Failing to develop students’ communicative competence
Among the four basic language skills, reading and listening are input skills while writing and speaking are output skills. In China, our mother tongue is Chinese. Therefore, there is no language environment for English learners. So reading serves as the most important means for learners to input knowledge. Hence how to deal with the relationship between input and output in the process of teaching is a hotly discussed issue. In the current reading class, teachers just run after the schedule of the college entrance examination. Almost all the time of a class is spent on the explanation of linguistic knowledge. And there is little room for students’ creative thinking. They have few opportunities to speak in the class. Under such a mode, the communicative competence of students is less likely to be increased.
1.1.3 Lack of interaction
In the teaching process of reading, most teachers strictly control over the class, while students have little chance to practice English. The students express their opinions only to their teachers’ questions. They dare not to express their feelings and ideas positively and freely. So little by little, they find that there exits some obstacles when they want to communicate with others in English. Therefore, they are unwilling to speak English for they think their English is poor, and if they make some mistakes while communicating, that may lose their face. So in such a classroom teaching, the main practitioner is the teacher, not the students. And the students play the passive roles while the teacher plays the active role. The interaction between teachers and students and between students and students is insufficient.
1.1.4 Lack of moral lessons
Nowadays more and more people start to find that the moral decline in our society is rather severe. Since the reform and opening-up, the country has always attached great importance to economic construction and ignored the moral construction. A good case in point is the system of education. Most teachers only judge whether a student is good or not through their marks. They hardly give students moral lessons in the teaching activities. In English reading class, almost all the teachers just spend the time on the explanation of linguistic knowledge without paying attention on the moral aspect. Teachers spare little time for students’ group work to foster the students’ cooperative personality.
1.1.5 Failing to develop the students’ reading strategies
Teachers are not paying too much attention on giving adequate training on the reading strategies towards their students and encouraging the students to use these strategies to improve their reading comprehension. Most teachers only teach new vocabularies and grammar rules. This makes students only get the literal meaning of the passage and misleads them to think that the reading class is only for them to learn some language points and grammar. If this persists, students will never acquire the right reading strategies. Besides, their reading ability will not be improved.
1.2 Causes of the problems
In the previous part, the problems in English reading teaching in senior middle school have been analyzed. It is obvious that the current teaching is not conducive to the improvement of students’ reading ability and the all-round development of students. Then what should be the causes of these problems?
Firstly, the current English reading teaching in senior middle school takes a teacher-centered method. Teachers are all in completely dominant places of the class. They arrange the reading class based on their own thoughts instead of taking students into consideration. Secondly, some teachers’ misunderstanding of the purpose of reading teaching is another important reason. Lastly, the influence of the examination-oriented education is probably the original reason. Under the guidance of the examination-oriented education system, teachers blindly strive for a faster teaching progress and neglect the cultivation of students’ ability, which makes the teaching of reading get a counterproductive result.
2. Student-centered method
As we all know, the objects of reading teaching are students. And the purpose of English reading teaching activities is to make the students master the language and improve their reading competence, but traditional teaching mode is inefficient for both teachers and students. In recent years, with the development of education in China, education for all-around development is advocated all over the country. The center of teaching is shifting from teachers to students.
2.1 Theoretical understanding of student-centered principle
John Dewey (1900), child psychologist and educator of the United States, first proposed to allow the children to become the center of education, called for education to achieve a “Copernican revolution”. He appealed for the changing of the original “teacher-centered teaching method” to “student-centered teaching method”, stressed the initiative and activity of students in the learning process and emphasized the leading role of the students’ interest in the teaching activities (Yang Kaicheng, 2005).
Student-centered method emphasizes the dominant place of the students, views students as the center of all teaching activities and fully respects the individuals. In this mode the teachers are the conductors, the organizers and the directors of reading teaching activities while the students become the master of class. That is to say, in the teaching process, teachers should fully understand the students’ characteristics and demands to arrange teaching activities scientifically. Student-centered teaching requires teachers to give up their overly dominant place in the past, organize teaching activities from the perspective of students, pay attention to the cultivation of students’ ability and give full play to the initiative and enthusiasm of the students’ learning. The purpose of this method in the teaching of English reading is to cultivate the students’ ability of autonomic learning, develop students’ linguistic competence and promote their comprehensive development.
2.2 Significance of student-centered principle
Student-centered teaching meets the requirements of the quality education. So it has its important significance.
Firstly, students’ motivation can be stimulated. Student-centered teaching method stresses the importance of students and respects the individuals. With the guidance of it, teachers will improve their teaching. Reading class will be more vivid. Secondly, students’ communicative competence will be improved. Student-centered method gives students more opportunities to speak. The reading class will be no more a stage for the teachers’ lectures. More speaking activities will be arranged in the reading class. Thus students’ speaking and other output competence will certainly be improved. Thirdly, teachers can know more about the students’ learning situation. More interaction enables teachers to listen to the students’ aspirations and make them understand the students better. What’s more, the class room atmosphere can also be mobilized. Lastly, more attention will be paid to students moral education and reading strategies. Students’ moral consciousness can be enhanced and students’ learning strategies and teachers’ teaching strategies will be cultivated.
In a word, the significance of student-centered teaching method can be reflected in all aspects of teaching and learning.
3. The application of student-centered principle in English reading teaching in senior middle school
Student-centered principle is the necessary requirement of today’s quality education. The teaching method can be used in every step in the teaching of English reading, but how to use it is the key point in the process of teaching, especially in senior high school. The following part will analyze how to apply it to practical teaching process.
3.1 Motivating the students’ interest
Interest, also called motivation, is one of the most important factors that lead one to their goals. It is a kind of drive. It is a zest and determination with a kind of excitement that leads one to persevere to reach greater heights. As the English saying goes, interest is half of the success. Generally speaking, students with much interest perform active in their English reading study. But currently most students are lack of interest in reading due to the teacher-centered teaching method. So if teachers want students to learn English reading well, the first and most important step should be motivating the students’ interest. As for motivating the students’ interest, there are many things the teacher can do to arouse their interest.
3.1.1 Applying appropriate lead-in
As an old saying goes, well begun is half done. A good beginning can not only make a good preparation for the presenting of new materials but also motivate the students’ interest. If the lead-in is proper, students will concentrate and learn in a pleasant and relaxed atmosphere. Classroom efficiency will be improved.
In the teaching process, various forms of lead-in can be utilized to stimulate students’ motivation. For example:
The passage A night the earth didn’t sleep in senior English for China Book 1 Unit 4 tells something happened before, during and after the Tangshan Earthquake in 1976. For this passage, the following lead-in can be used:
T: Hello, everybody. At the beginning of this class, I would like to give you a puzzle. Firstly, I will give you several words as clues. Listen and try to guess a word. You can speak the word out immediately whenever you get the answer. Are you clear?
S: Yes.
T: OK. Now let’s go. 1976, Feng Xiaogang, movie, Tangshan, 2008, May 12th, Wenchuan.
…
We can easily guess that the answer should be “earthquake”.
When teachers present this puzzle in reading class, most students will take an active part in it. Perhaps some students can get the right answer before the last prompt is given. Then the teacher can praise the students and tell them that we will learn something about ea