The English Reading Purposes Strategies in Middle School Classroom.doc

中学课堂英语阅读目的与策略The English Reading Purposes Strategies in Middle School Classroom ContentsAbstract-1.Introduction-1. Defining “Reading and Reading Comprehension”-2 1. What is reading? -22. What kind of reading should students do? -3. Description of Reading Purposes-41. Reading for Literary Experience-42. Reading to Gain Information-43. Reading to Perform a Task-5. Reading strategies-51. Defining “reading strategies”-62. What reading skills should students acquire? -6. The relationship between reading purposes and reading strategies-7. The reading strategies in middles school classroom-81. What are the principles behind the teaching of reading? -92. Reading strategies in the middle school classroom-10Before Reading: Tasks and Strategies-12During Reading: Tasks and Strategies-14After reading: tasks and strategies-15Conclusion-15References-17The English Reading Purposes and StrategiesIn Middle School Classroom摘 要：尽管许多教育者提出了关于阅读技巧的有效方法，为学生提供了阅读动机及具体的实践过程，但在阅读技巧方面的研究还不完全。该论文提出了运用阅读目的与策略即目的性阅读来增强理解能力引导学生进行有意义的学习。一些专家提出了许多阅读技巧, 例如，阅读目的，阅读策略，阅读方法等，但却很少有关于如何根据阅读目的选择正确的阅读技巧的研究。该论文就中学英语课堂教学中如何引导学生进行有目的有策略的阅读来培养学生实际运用语言的能力等一系列问题进行论述。关键字： 阅读目的 阅读技巧 目的性阅读Abstract：Although many educators theorize effective reading strategies and provide students with motivating practice and performance in reading comprehension, yet the research on reading comprehension strategies are inconclusive.  The purpose of this study focuses on using questioning strategies, namely, “Purposeful Reading” to improve reading comprehension ability, and to help students learn meaningfully. There are a lot of researches on reading such as reading purposes, reading strategies, reading methods and so on. But there is little research on choosing right or suitable reading strategies for particular reading purposes .The thesis is studying on how teachers help students read purposefully and meaningfully in middle school classroom. And the paper discusses how to train their abilities of application of language. Key words： reading purposes reading strategies purposeful reading The English Reading Purposes and StrategiesIn Middle School Classroom.IntroductionComprehension is the reason for reading. If readers can read the words but do not understand what they are reading, they are not really reading. As they read, good readers are both purposeful and active. Good readers have a purpose for reading. They may read to find out how to use a food processor, read a guidebook to gather information about national parks, read a textbook to satisfy the requirements of a course, read a magazine for entertainment, or read a classic novel to experience the pleasures of great literature. Good readers think actively as they read. To make sense of what they read, good readers engage in a complicated process. Using their experiences and knowledge of the world, their knowledge of vocabulary and language structure, and their knowledge of reading strategies (or plans), good readers make sense of the text and know how to get the most out of it. They know when they have problems with understanding and how to resolve these problems as they occur. Research over 30 years has shown that instruction in comprehension can help students understand what they read, remember what they read, and communicate with others about what they read. The scientific research on text comprehension instruction reveals important information about what students should be taught about text comprehension and how it should be taught. The following key findings are of particular interest and value to classroom teachers. Comprehension strategies are conscious plans-sets of steps that good readers use to make sense of text. Comprehension strategy instruction helps students become purposeful, active readers who are in control of their own reading comprehension. Defining “Reading and Reading Comprehension” 1 What is reading?Far from being a “passive” skills, reading, is in fact, an active process in which readers relate information in the text to what they already known. Knowledge of language allows readers to identify the printed words and sentences. Knowledge of the world allows readers to comprehend their words and sentences. The purposes of good readers are meaningful， they do not decode each letter or each word. Instead, they take in chunks of the text and relate it to what they know. Traditionally, many psychologists and teachers have insisted that reading is nothing more than decoding writing symbols to sounds. (i.e. figuring out what the printed word says ). Others traditionally have insisted that reading involves not only decoding from print to sound, but also comprehending the written material. Forrest-Fressley and Waller (1984) felt that reading is not merely a decoding process nor it is solely a comprehension. Reading process is not just a “decoding plus comprehension” but reading involves even more, it involves at least three types of skills: decoding, comprehension, and nature reading strategies (Forrest-Pressley & Brown, 1984; Brown, 1980). Besides, reading traditionally has been considered as cognitive task. An unfortunate consequence of such a view of reading is that there has been no room for concern for the “executive control” that is done by a skilled reader. Only recently have several authors (e.g. Baker Brown, 1984; Brown 1980; Myers & Pairs, 1928) suggested that reading might involve metacognition as well as cognition. Johnson （1983）has attempted to approach the issue of accessing comprehension from a rational point of view. He first considers what reading comprehension is, and then considers what factors influence it and its assessment-including reader and text characteristics. He comes to a definition of reading comprehension: That is reading comprehension is considered to be a complex behavior, which involves conscious and unconscious uses of various strategies, including problem-solving strategies, to build a model of the meaning, which is assumed to have intended. The model is constructed using schematic knowledge structures and the various systems, which the writer has given (e.g. Words, syntax, macrostructure, social information) to generate hypotheses, which are tested using carious logical and pragmatic strategies. Most of this model must be inferred, since text can never be fully explicit and, in general, very little of it is explicit because even the appropriate intentional and extensional meanings of words must be inferred from their context. (1983).In considering what factors influence reading comprehension and its assessment, Johson says that assessment of reading comprehension requires interpretation of an individuals performance of some test which is based on the test will depend on characteristics of the text, the nature of the test and the context as well as the persons reading abilities and prior knowledge (Johson, 1983). The most popular and powerful view of reading in ELT (English Language Teaching) is the psycholinguistic mode. In this view, reading is psycholinguistic guessing game (Goodman, 1967), a process in which readers sample that text, make hypotheses about what is coming next, sample the text again in order to test their hypotheses, confirm or disconfirm them, make new hypotheses, and so forth. According to Googman, every cognitive level includes an optical cycle, so that readers do not have to decode every letter and word. Smith concurred with Goodmans arguments that reading was an imprecise hypothesis-driven process. Clarke and Siberstein (1997) claimed that reading was characterized as an active process of comprehending and students needed to teach strategies to read more efficiently. For teachers, the goal of instruction was to provide students with a range of effective approaches to texts-including helping students define goals and strategies for reading, to use pre-reading activities to hence conceptual readiness, and to provide students strategies to deal with difficult syntax, vocabulary, and organizational structure. Coady (1997) reinterpreted Goodmans psycholinguistics model into a model more specifically suited to second language learners. Coady argued that a conceptualization of the reading process requires three components: process strategies, background knowledge and conceptual abilities. Research has argued that fluent reading is rapid; the reader needs to maintain the flow of the information at a sufficient rate to make connections and inferences vital to comprehension. Reading is purposeful; the reader has a purpose for reading, whether it is for entertainment, information, or research. Reading for a purpose, provides motivation-an important aspect of being a good reader. Reading is interactive; the readers make use of information from his or her background knowledge as well as information from the printed page. Reading is also interactive in the sense that many skills work together simultaneously in the process. Reading is comprehension that the reader typically expects to understand what he or she is reading. Students, the fluent reader does not begin to read wondering whether or not he or she will understand the text. Reading is flexible; the reader employs a range of strategies to read efficiently. These strategies include adjusting the reading speed, skimming ahead, considering titles, heading, pictures, and text structure information, anticipating information to come, and so on. Finally, readers develop gradually. The reader does not become fluent suddenly, or immediately. Fluent reading is the product of longterm effort and gradual improvement.2What kind of reading should students do?There has been frequent discussion about what kind of reading texts are suitable for English Language students. The greatest controversy has centered on whether the texts should be “authentic” or not. That is because people have worried about more traditional language-teaching materials, which tended to look artificial and to use over-simplified language, which any native speaker would find comical and untypical.However, if you give low-lever students a copy of the times or the guardian (which are certainly authentic for native speakers), they will probably not be able to understand them at all. There will be far too many words they have never seen before; the grammar will be (for them) convoluted.A balance has to be struck between real English on the one hand, and the students capabilities on the other. There are some authentic written materials that beginner students can understand to some degree such as menus, timetables, signs and basic instructions. But for long prose, we may want to offer our students texts, which are not adapted for their level. The important thing is that such texts are as much like real English as possible.The topics and types of reading text are worth covering too. Should our students always read factual encyclopedia-type texts or should we expose them to novels and short stories? Should they only read timetables and menus or can we offer them business letters and newspaper articles? A lot will depend on who the students are. If they are all business people, the teacher may want to concentrate on business texts. If they are science students, reading scientific texts may be priority. But if, as is often the case, they are a mixed group with different interests and careers, a more varied diet is appropriate. Among the things the teacher may want them to read are magazine articles, letters, stories, poems, and reference materials. . Description of Reading PurposesReading involves an interaction between specific types of text or written material and a reader who has a purpose for reading that is related to the type of text and the context of the reading situation. There are three reading purposes: literary text for literary experience, informational text to gain information, and documents to perform a task. 1. Reading for Literary ExperienceReading for literary experience involves reading literary text to explore the human condition, to relate narrative events with personal experience, and to consider the interplay in the selection among emotions, events, and possibilities. 2. Reading to Gain InformationReading to gain information involves reading informative passages in order to obtain some general or specific information. This often requires a more utilitarian approach to reading that requires the use of certain reading/thinking strategies different from those used for other purposes. In addition, reading to gain information often involves reading and interpreting adjunct aids such as charts, graphs, maps, and tables that provide supplemental or tangential data. 3. Reading to Perform a TaskReading to perform a task involves reading various types of materials for the purpose of applying the information or directions in completing a specific task. The readers purpose for gaining meaning extends beyond understanding the text to include the accomplishment of a certain activity. Zou Qiming and Zhou Ruiqi, the professors of Guangdong Foreign Studies University, argued that there were two reading purposes; one is reading for improving English, the other is reading for information.The classification reading purposesClassificationConcrete purposeRead for improving English Expand the vocabularyImprove read rate and skillImprove the competence of readingBe familiar with English grammarImprove the writing ability of EnglishRead for information Increase knowledgeObtain informationFind out about the structure of the article and main viewUnderstand western cultureFind out about others