英语论文培养学生的阅读能力.doc

内江师范学院本科毕业论文(设计)

本科毕业论文设计
(定稿)
学 生： 马 倩
学 号： 20100541092
专 业： 英 语
班 级： 2010 级 1 班
指导教师： 李 莉

Content
Abstract 3
Introduction 4
I. Current Situations of English Reading Teaching in High Schools 4
A. Problems in Current English Reading Teaching in High Schools 4
1. Lack of Interest 4
2. Failing to Develop Students’ Communicative Competence 5
3. Lack of Interaction 5
4. Lack of Moral Lessons 6
5. Failing to Develop the Students’ Reading Strategies 6
B. Causes of the Problems 6
II. The Effective Methods of English Reading Teaching 7
A. Ways to Motivate the Students’ Interest in Reading 7
B. Means to Develop the Students’ Productive Competence 8
C. Increasing Interaction in Reading Class 9
D. Giving Moral Lessons While Teaching 11
E. Employing Scientific Reading and Teaching Strategies 11
1. Correcting the Students’ Bad Reading Habits 11
2. Cultivating the Students Skimming and Scanning Skills 12
3. Teaching Grammar and Vocabulary in the Context 13
Conclusion 13
Notes…………………………………………………………………………………………….15
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………16
Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………..17

Abstract: Training students’ reading ability is quite important. But some problems still exist in reading teaching. This paper will talk about what problems exist in reading teaching and how to deal with these problems.
Key Words: existing problems; causes; effective ways; high schools

摘要：培养学生的阅读能力相当的重要，但是在阅读教学中仍然存在着许多的问题。这篇论文将会提出阅读教学中存在的问题，以及如何解决这些问题。
关键词：现存问题；原因；有效方法；中学

Effective Ways of English Reading Teaching in High Schools
Introduction
In the society of the knowledge explosion and information revolution, text is still the best carrier of information across time and space; it is the best way for long-range communication of experience, thoughts and feelings; it is the best media for human to convey scientific and cultural information; it is also the best tool for the transmission of civilization. Hence if you hope to gain a large number of needed information and keep pace with the times, you have to learn to read and improve your reading ability.
Reading is the one of main ways to obtain knowledge and information for senior high school students. Also, it is one of the most significant four language skills. As we know, the listening, speaking, reading and writing are the four language skills. Reading is helpful for learners to develop their linguistic capacity. And reading comprehension takes the most crucial part in all kinds of English tests, even in the college entrance examination. Teachers put a high value on the reading teaching, particularly in senior high school, because of those factors. However, the teachers’ lecture in a reading class takes a crucial part in the practical teaching process. So the whole reading class becomes a stage for a teacher to teach linguistic knowledge with grammar translation approach.1 There are some problems in reading teaching. So this essay mainly illustrates the importance of reading ability, the existing problems of English reading teaching, causes of these problems, and the effective ways of English reading teaching in high schools.
I. Current Situations of English Reading Teaching in High Schools
A. Problems in Current English Reading Teaching in High Schools
The current English reading teaching fails to develop students’ reading ability and other linguistic capacity as well as has some other problems.
1. Lack of Interest
In current reading class, the teachers’ role is always dominant and active. They always direct the learning process, supervise and correct the students’ behavior. And they attach too much importance to their own lectures. However, the students’ role is passive, learning grammar and vocabulary only through the teachers’ analyzation of sentences. In this way, a whole passage is totally torn to pieces. What’s more, most of the teachers always pay little attention to the significance of pre-reading activity. Through communicating with many teachers in senior high school, you can find easily that lead-in is just a waste of time in their mind. And teachers also always choose some outdated materials in the teaching process In this case, the reading class must be extremely dull. And further more, the students’ interest cannot be stimulated.
2. Failing to Develop Students’ Communicative Competence
As we all know, the input skills are reading and listening while the output skills are writing and speaking among the four basic language skills. In China, the people here say Chinese rather than English. Therefore, English learners have no language environment here. So reading is always regarded as the main methods for learners to gain knowledge and information. Therefore, it is a popular topic that how to cope with the relevance between input and output in the process of reading teaching. In the current reading class, teachers only follow the schedule of the college entrance examination. They almost spent all the time of a class on explaining linguistic knowledge. And there is little chance for students to develop their creative thinking and to speak English in the class. In this case, it is hard for students to improve their communicative capacity.
3. Lack of Interaction
In the process of reading teaching, the class is strictly dominated by teachers so that the students have little chance to practice English in class. The students present their own thoughts only to their teachers’ questions. They are afraid to show their thoughts and opinions positively and freely. Gradually, when talking with other people in English, they find that there are some problems. So finally, they are reluctant to speak English because they think their English is poor and they are afraid of making mistakes while communicating. So in such a circumstance, the teacher is the main practitioner rather than the students. And the teacher plays the active role; however, the students are passive. The interaction between teachers and students and between students is farther enough.
4. Lack of Moral Lessons
Nowadays more and more people begin to realize that the moral decline in our society is quite severe. Since the reform and opening-up, the economic construction has been paid more attention to while the moral construction has been paid less attention to in our country. The education system is a good example in this point. Most teachers only judge whether a student is good or not through their marks. They ignore moral lessons in the process of teaching. In English reading class, most of the teachers are willing to spend the time on explaining linguistic knowledge while they are reluctant to spend the time on the moral aspect. And there is little time for group work activities so that students can not develop their cooperative personality.
5. Failing to Develop the Students’ Reading Strategies
Teachers pay little attention to give adequate training on the reading strategies towards their students and encourage the students to use the strategies to enhance their reading comprehension. Only new vocabularies and grammar rules are taught by most teachers. It has students just understand the literal meaning of the passage and it makes them develop a wrong mind that the task of reading is to learn some language points and grammar. If this situation still exists, the right reading strategies can never be grasped by students. Besides, it will be hard for students to improve their reading ability. 2
B. Causes of the Problems
The problems in current English reading teaching in high schools have been analyzed. Obviously, the current teaching is not good for developing students’ reading ability and promoting students’ all-round development. Then what are the causes of these problems?
To begin with, the current English reading teaching in high schools takes a teacher-centered method. Teachers play the active role in class. They design the reading class depending on their own opinions without taking students into consideration. More over, some teachers misunderstand the purpose of reading teaching. What’s more, the most important one must be the examination-oriented education. Influenced by the examination-oriented education system, the reading teaching gets an opposite result for teachers blindly pursue a faster teaching progress and ignore to cultivate the students’ reading ability.
II. The Effective Methods of English Reading Teaching
A. Ways to Motivate the Students’ Interest in Reading
Interest is an important factor to guide someone to their dreams. It is a kind of motivation. It is also one’s determination to reach a higher height. Also, as an English saying goes, interest is half of the success. Generally speaking, if students are interested in reading, they will show more active in their English reading study. However, nowadays a lot of students are lack of interest in reading because of the teacher-centered teaching method. Therefore, teachers hoping to improve students’ reading ability, motivating the students’ interest should be the most crucial thing. To motivate the students’ interest, there are two means to arouse their interest in the following.
● Applying Appropriate pre-reading activities
There is an English saying: well begun is half done A good beginning is not only good for making a good preparation for showing new materials but also helpful for arousing the students’ interest. If the pre-reading activity is well-designed, students can concentrate on the class and learn English well easily.
Pre-reading activities are activities that teachers do at the beginning of the lesson, which, just take a short time in a lesson, can achieve a wide range of purposes: these can be used to cultivate early levels of engagement and motivation; to make all students soon on task; to inject a sense of pace in the lesson; to create an expectation that students will think and join in the lesson; to create a climate of interaction between teachers and students or between students; especially, to introduce new topics by making use of students’ prior knowledge. Pre-reading activities can be a daily conversation, a story, a guessing game, a picture description, homework checking; a song, questions and answers and so on. No matter what you do as a pre-reading activity, it is quite meaningful to memorize that it should be directly conducive to the whole lesson objectives. Hence, teachers have to choose the pre-reading activities that meet the lesson objectives best. And keep the pre-reading activity brief. 3
● Choosing Suitable Materials
Nowadays, the book which supports a new concept of teaching and is compiled by the People’s Education Press has been chosen as the textbook in many schools. The book includes scientific arrangement and fashionable contents. However, the world is an information explosion world. The world changes every day. So some materials are out of style and the topic is also too narrow for the students. For example, there are some famous historical figures in the book like Walt Disney, Martin Luther King, and Albert Einstein and so on. Most of the Students have already heard about them before. So, students do not long to gain information any more when they learn the passages. There is another example. In Book 5 Unit 3, the article Life in the future talks about the application of computers in different areas in daily life. The simple future tense was used in the article. So it is obvious that the article is out of fashion.4
As it is known to all, teaching materials are the basic factors of teaching, the objects of study and the carriers of specific knowledge. Teaching efficiency is deeply influenced through the choosing of teaching materials. A good teaching material can stimulate the students’ interest and attract students’ attention. So it is quite significant to choose suitable materials for the students.
When choosing reading materials, teachers should make sure not only there is a greater variety, but also these materials can help students to meet their future needs. There are authentic reading materials, non- authentic reading materials, and some extra materials. Authentic reading materials are designed for native speakers. Non- authentic reading materials are written for language students with some language control, such as simulated materials. Simulated materials are aimed for beginner students who are probably not able to handle genuine authentic material. Besides authentic and non- authentic reading materials, there are some extra materials which are things we read in our daily life. Such as, calendars, addresses, phone books, name cards, maps, pamphlets, washing instructions, short stories, novels, posters, fax messages and so on. 5
B. Means to Develop the Students’ Productive Competence
There is no language environment for English learners in china. They can only practice English in their class. In the previous section, we have already pointed out that the current English reading teaching fails to cultivate the students’ communicative capacity. So teachers had better try their best to improve the students’ productive competence in the reading class.
● Combining Reading with Speaking and Writing
As we all know, the two output language skills for students are speaking and writing. To train the students’ ability of communicating with others is the original aim of English teaching. So the ability of speaking and writing is quite important and useful. Reading is the main means to gain knowledge and information. It should be combined with speaking and writing.
● Bringing Group Work into Reading Class
In daily life, there is little chance for students to communicate with each other in English. So it is necessary for teachers to create some opportunities for students to practice English. And the group work activity is help for students to talk with each other freely and not to be afraid of making mistakes.
To design the group work activity, what the teachers should do is to divide the class into groups of six or eight students, give each group a topic and require each group to discuss its own topic in limited time and to exchange topic from others. To make students take responsibilities for the discussion, teachers have to guide the students to continue conversations and encourage them to speak freely. After discussion students in each group should be asked to show their answers to the whole class one by one. By this way, all the students can participate in the discussion. It’s quite meaningful for students to build their confidence to speak English. 6
C. Increasing Interaction in Reading Class
To make the s