on-english-reading-teaching-in-senior-high-schools.doc

On English Reading Teaching In Senior High Schools

[Abstract] English is the most widely used language in the world. It is an international language. There is no doubt that, in the modern world, it is a tool for communicating with the outside world and a weapon to compete in the world. In our modern society, with the world economy global and the relationship between countries more frequent, the ability of getting information from reading becomes more and more important. In our country, in senior high schools, English reading teaching is becoming the most important part in the whole English teaching. For many years, a number of English teachers have tried many means in reading teaching to improve the students’ reading ability. However, there are still some teacher can’t change their teaching idea completely. They are just for stabilization and afraid of reform under the circumstance of education for examination. So there still some issues in English teaching in senior high schools. The purpose of our English teaching is to cultivate students’ independent reading ability and language using ability. Further more, reading comprehension covers 60% in English test in NMET in recent years, which requests us to pay more attention to training the students’ reading comprehension skills in our teaching process. English reading refers to the readers using some relative English knowledge and non-English knowledge to unscramble some reading material, which contains certain English knowledge or non-English knowledge. English knowledge refers to the sum of the readers’ English sound, vocabulary, grammar and writings knowledge, while non-English knowledge refers to the background knowledge, that is, the sum of knowledge experience obtained directly or indirectly.
[Key words]: problems; countermeasures; speed; skill; nicety; deepness
I、Introduction Reading teaching takes a very important part in English teaching. We should get the students to listen more, read more and practice more on the base of real practice. Students’ reading skills and language using ability can be improved through series of reading. Reading lessons is to plant students’ reading ability in our teaching aims. To realize this aim, we need to learn and master some language knowledge in the text (words, sentence structures, grammar and useful expressions, etc.) and know about the cultural background relating to the text. Then, maybe the students’ reading speed, reading skills and reading nicety and deepness can be improved.
In modern education, we focus more on training the pupils self -development ability, which calls for us teachers to let the pupils know not only what to learn but also how to learn. We should take measures to get the students to know how to learn and get them to have the ability of learning and using language. In English reading process, teachers should adopt different reading modes and tactics according to different reading aims and requests, and follow the reading procedure from shallow to deepness, surface to inner, concrete to generalization.
Ⅱ、 Some problems existing in our present reading teaching and the countermeasure .
Reading ability is one of the most important part in senior high school. The level of reading ability directly affect the students’ comprehensive language using ability. Although many English teaching researchers and teachers have done a lot of work to plant students’ reading skills and got some achievements , there still exists some problems.
1、The behindhand concept of teaching and the singleness of training form, which can’t make the students construct correct canto structure knowledge .
Traditional grammar and translation teaching method has been used in China for many years. In this method , teachers look on texts as the carrier of language knowledge. They analyze the passages aiming at some single language phenomena Then have an explanation by some examples and finally consolidate the language knowledge by a great deal of non-scene and sterile practice . During this course , students are passive knowledge receivers ,not active study actors. However, this mode has ever taken up the English class for quite a long time. After the new teaching material has been published, many English teachers have been exploring and practicing actively different teaching methods, yet one thing we should know is that we are still deeply affected by the traditional teaching modes. Some teachers have the thought of keeping stabilization and being afraid of change and reform. So they can’t right-about their teaching concept, and many of them still take the “Bottom-up”[1] modes, thinking that readers can understand the meaning of articles just by understanding the passage word by word, sentence by sentence. When coming to the practice teaching step, teachers just find some ready-made material for the students to read and then check the answers and then all are Ok.
Countermeasure: Adopting “Top-down” teaching method to help students construct correct canto structure.
With the development of application linguistics and psychological linguistics, many people come to realize that reading is not just a process of decoding, but a complex and motile psycholinguistic guessing game[2]. In reading teaching, traditional “Bottom-up” mode emphasize more on words understanding and sentence structures than on the understanding of the whole passage. They think texts are only a carrier of language knowledge and ignore the training of reading skills and ability. While “Top-down” mode puts more emphasis on constructing the general meaning and picture of the whole text and the background of the passage and the intension of the writer. Students can learn the components of the text (paragraphs, sentences, words) on the base of mastering the main idea of the whole text. In senior high school English reading teaching, when dealing with the text, teachers can introduce the topic of the text by enlightening (eg. ask and answer, discussion), which can make the students know the content of the topic and activate their reading interest. For example, in Senior English for China Students’ B2,Text “Life In The Future”, because most of the students have known something about computer and some are even very skillful at computer operation, teacher can begin the introduction with the following two questions: ①Where are computers used in our life?②Do computers bring about great convenience? This will evoke the students’ existing knowledge and will easily come to the topic.
2.The straitness of reading material and small quantity of language input, which can’t arouse students’ interest enough.
Now, most of the schools in our country are using the teaching material edited in the 1990s by PEP(China) and LONGMAN(Britain), which have gained recognition by many English teaching staff for its brand-new teaching idea, scientific arrangement and rich stylish content. But we are in an information explosive age. and the development of things around us changes quickly .So from this point , the subject matter in this kind of book are too limited and strait .For example ,there are many articles about famous characters in the teaching material (eg.: Walt Disney ,Abraham Linkon ,Karl Marx etc., which students have learnt about before.). This will weaken the students’ eagerness for getting information. If we carry some articles like football star Baker Hame ,computer star Bill Gates etc., we can easily inspire the students’ reading interest , Another example is about the text “Life in The Future ”. It introduced computers used in agriculture , daily life, traffic transportation and aviation ,but didn’t mention about the most widely used and greatly effective one –Internet, even a word All these obviously can’t waken students’ interest.
Countermeasure: Make full use of computer network, purify and optimize network resources to serve for English teaching.
With the information society coming, the process and using of information from internet will become a sign of one’s basic ability and culture level . Therefore, teachers should make full use of the resources in the internet to increase students’ after-class reading quantity and enlarge their reading view to make up the deficiency of classroom teaching. Now there are electronic edition of 21 Century, English Weeks and so on in the internet. After we studied Aswan Dam, we can find some material about Three Gorge Project as the supplement of the text.
3 The explanation of language points is too much and particular, which can’t make students build up correct language study view.
In present middle school English teaching, many teachers rely on lots of exercises. They focus more on language points. When they meet one in reading teaching, they teach its different usages as detailed as possible. When meeting a kind of grammar phenomena , they not only explain it itself , but also relative ones detailedly. For example when they teach the word “advise”, they not only teach the structures “advise sb. to do sth.” and “advise doing sth. ” but also its noun form “advice” and the differences between “advice” and “suggestion”. This will mislead the students. Students will think that English leaning is not a tool but some language points .
Countermeasure: According as language acquisition to help the students build up correct language study view.
In the second language acquisition, Krashen’s “The Input Hypothesis” [3] answered the question of how to acquire language in theory or practice. The input of the learner should be a little higher than his or her present level Krashen’s theory is coherent to the principle of “Letting the students master the language through using it” in communicating teaching method. In teaching , teachers should teach the students according to their present level and get them to obtain real pleasure through language study and gradually plant their correct language study view.
Ⅲ、 Some reading modes used in reading.
1、Skim. Read the text quickly and roughly and grasp the synopsis of the text to help further understanding, which has a preparation for careful reading. Look for the main sentence and grasp the meaning, Find out the main sentence in each paragraph. Generally, an article is written under a center meaning. When we have reading lessons, we should consciously encourage the students to find out the main sentence and get them to know the relation between the main sentence and some detailed information of the text. If there is no main sentence in a paragraph, the teacher can lead the students to analyze, conclude and sum the main idea of the paragraph according to the relation of each paragraph and sentence relation. Thereby, realize the aim of whole understanding of the text, and obtain the exact information expressed in the article.
2、Skip, As Bacon said,“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested.”[5] In reading process, when we just want some obvious, individual information, we can take this reading method. In this way, it can be very easy and quick to get the information we need. For example, the year numbers, people’s names and place-names. We can hold the key words, use grammar transition words, mood transition words and tenses, etc, to grasp the skeleton of the article.
3、Careful reading. Read the text carefully paragraph by paragraph, pay special attention to the details and language structure. Teachers can also help the students’ to deal with some important language points and grasp the main facts and key information. As a result, come to the further understanding of the text. In an article, generally, there always are logic relations between paragraphs, and each paragraph has important relation to the main subject. So, understanding the article structure is very useful for the pupils to grasp the subject and main idea of the test.
4、Guessing reading. When we read English articles, we can’t know all the English words. Often there are some words or expressions we never met before. So at this time, we can guess the meaning of the word in the context, not just quickly turn to a dictionary, we can also guess the indicating meaning and consequence in the context. Therefore, in the English reading teaching, helping the students to form the ability of guessing the meaning of new words or expressions is very important, and in some sense, very crucial. For instance, in NMET, English test paper (Beijing), reading comprehension (C), No. 61, What does the underlined word“matriarch”mean? There are four choices. A. An old member of an elephant family; B.A female head of an elephant family; C. A wise elephant; D. A large elephant. We choose “B”. Because from the context, in the first paragraph, “Elephant families are matriarchal. And the social knowledge gained by the oldest females is the key to a family group’s survival, according to a study published in April by Karean Mc Corab, a biologist at Sussex university in English.”[6]
5、General reading. Get the students to read the article from the title for each part generally to conclude the main point and the anther’s view point and attitude. Thus the students can understand the general picture of the text. General reading can also help students to seize the meaning relations in the context and develop their integrate generalization ability.
Ⅳ、 Some teaching models in reading teaching.
We should make full use of the textbooks in the classroom teaching and encourage the students to read English materials as many as possible after class. Only in this way can we further improve the students’ reading skills.
1、Make good use of the text in the textbook. It is necessary for the teachers to reform the classroom teaching structure. Intensive and extensive reading should be introduced in reading lessons. Teachers must put the emphasis on students’ self- reading. When we teach the text, first we should give the students 5-10 minutes to read it quickly and make them try to find the answers to some questions according to the text. In this step, the questions listed by the teacher should be easy and general. For example, in senior English for China Students’ Book 2A, Lesson 18, reading comprehension Charlie Chaplin(1)[7]， Teacher can list the two questions:①What kind of films did Chaplin act in? ② Which were more popular, his early films or his later films? Then get the students to read the text quickly and find the answer to these two questions. Next, teacher can give the students 10-15 minutes to read the text more carefully to learn some more detailed information and make them try to find out the answers to the questions which are more concrete and detail. Then teachers can check the answers by asking some individual students to answer. In this step, teacher can encourage the students to speak out any question they still don’t quite understand. It is necessary for the students to have a discussion on any doubt