英语教育毕业论文利用兴趣提高中学生英语阅读水平.doc

题目利用兴趣提高中学生英语阅读水平项目设计者北京电大平谷分校提交时间： 2005年3月10日课程名称： 论文项目设计Project Title IMPROVING THE MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS READING ABILITY THROUGH THEIR INTERESTSInvestigatorBeijing TV UniversitySubmitted on March 10,2005In fulfillment of the coursePractical Project Design Acknowledgment I am mostly grateful to my supervisor Zheng Yingxiu, whose help and patience made this project get off the ground and come to a close smoothly.I am also grateful to Professor Gu Yueguo, who wrote “Practical Project design” for us and gave us good before the project got off the ground, and Professor Liu Yongquan, whose speech had promoted our self-confidence.No amount of thanks will be adequate for my students without whose willing participation in the project implementation it would have remained in my mind.Last but not the least, thanks are given to my parents who have shared with me my worries, frustrations, and hopefully my ultimate happiness in eventually finishing this project.摘要本文从英语语言教学的角度出发， 研究了中学阅读方面的问题。 与同类研究相比，本文旨在突出研讨中学英语教学中总计教学的重要性。我们的主要研究目的包括如何利用兴趣有效提高中学英语阅读兴趣爱好水平， 本文共由四个部分组成。我们首先简单介绍了阅读教学中的一般情况， 然后提出了兴趣爱好理论用以验证兴趣爱好同阅读之间的关系。 此外， 我们还讨论了必要的背景知识和阅读技巧与阅读理解和速度之间的关系。最后我们得出了利用兴趣，掌握必要的背景知识和阅读技巧，可以提高学生的阅读水平的结论，以此结束了全篇的讨论，本项研究发现以上三个要素是影响中学生阅读能力的主要因素，本项研究可望对相关研究产生积极影响，这些影响主要体现在通过上述三个因素的控制，我们可以设计一种整合型的教学方案，促进和发展中学阅读教学，提高学生的阅读能力。关键词： 英语阅读, 学习动机, 背景知识, 阅读技巧 语言教学 AbstractI examine the reading issue from a language teaching perspective. Different from previous research, this paper wants 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 propose 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 their 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 deal 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 training;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 Questionnaire 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, 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. They 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 inferring 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 havent 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 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 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 “bottom-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 beginning 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.Hudson 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 teaching 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 difficult 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 methods 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 practice 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 appendix 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 words. 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 not 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 important 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 read 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 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 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 especially 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. Einstein 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. 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 fail 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 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 given 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 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 knowledge 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 what 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 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 reading; 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 unnecessary 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 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 the 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 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 Mari Studied in Senior