| With the development of globalization,communications between countries have become more and more frequent and English is the main language in many aspects.Because of the tremendous impact of English,English teaching and learning becomes more vital than ever.In English learning,reading is one of the most common and important input.Efforts have been made by various scholars and professors in China to improve students' English reading ability,and Krashen's theory of Second Language Acquisition especially the Input Hypothesis has made a crucial contribution to this aspect.This hypothesis pointed out that language is naturally acquired through sufficient comprehensible input,which can be inferred that input is the key to language acquisition.Therefore,teachers should pay much attention to this key factor in the process of English reading teaching.In fact,there are many teachers have made various attempts to seek for a more effective way than Traditional reading teaching method.Thus Communicative Language Teaching(CLT)gains its popularity in China.CLT stresses communicative activities that provide real use of language for learners and in designing the class activities,application of Information Gap principle can double the results.Of note is that under the wave of the educational reform nationwide,English reading teaching in China may be more ready to apply IG tasks than ever before.Based on Krashen's Input Hypothesis,this paper conducts an experiment by applying IG tasks to college English reading teaching.The study tries to explore the validity of IG tasks in college English reading teaching and puts forward three questions: 1)What characteristics are shown in students' English aptitude and attitude toward English reading before the experiment? 2)What changes are there after the experiment? 3)What role does Information Gap Task play in these changes?In order to show the importance of the study,the author introduces research background as well as significance of the study in the first chapter.Reading is the main input way of language learning and also one of the most important skills in language.However,in China target language environment is not sufficiently provided in classes,thus students' reading learning in class is rather passive.Therefore,it is necessary for teachers to apply IG tasks in English reading teaching in order to build up students' interests in English reading,improve their reading ability and further develop their communicative competence in English.Thus,this experiment has its significance in two aspects: the theoretical significance and practical significance.The former lies in evaluating the impact of IG task on college English reading teaching while the latter lies in putting forward a more comprehensive and concrete teaching procedures.In the second chapter,the author uses a literature research method to elaborate researches on Information Gap and reading teaching at home and abroad.IG principle derives from Communicative Language Teaching(CLT)which stresses the communicative aspect of language.According to the previous studies,it is known that reading is an interactive activity,in another word,reading is also a communication between the reader and the writer as well as interaction between the knowledge stored in the reader's mind and the written language information.Therefore,applying IG task to college English reading teaching is practical and rather significant.In this part,current situation in college English reading teaching in China is also mentioned.Firstly,most college reading teaching is still grammar-and-vocabulary centered.Vocabulary is still regarded as the main factor in reading comprehension.Secondly,most English reading classes in college are still teacher-centered.Teachers are the main conductor and there are few activities or communications neither between the teacher and students nor among students themselves.Chapter three is the theoretical framework of the study.The theoretical framework in this study is Krashen's Input Hypothesis.This hypothesis points out four characteristics of input: firstly,the input should be comprehensible.Secondly,the input should be sufficient.Thirdly,grammatical sequence of input is not necessary.Finally,the input should be interesting and relevant.Basic theory of IG principle is also presented in this part together with IG tasks in CLT.Information Gap exists in our daily communication;however IG tasks in language teaching should be well planned.Only when the tasks are carefully designed can it provide students a realistic environment of using target language,which is English in this study.In the process of filling in the gap,students acquire language naturally by exchanging information.Under the theoretical studies on Krashen's input hypothesis and IG tasks,the author attempts to apply IG tasks to college English reading teaching and chapter four is the methodology of the study.Two classes are involved in this study,one as Experimental Class(EC)and the other as Control Class(CC).Both of them are from same major of the same university with the same major,but in the one-semester's English learning,IG tasks are applied to reading teaching of EC while in CC traditional reading teaching method is used.Questionnaires and reading tests are employed before and after the experiment to know the characteristics in students' attitude toward English reading and their reading ability before the experiment as well as the changes after the experiment.And then,by comparing results,the author further explores what role IG tasks play in the changes.Besides reading comprehension test,there are two types of questionnaires: one is to understand students' attitude toward English reading and the other is to see the acceptance of IG tasks by students in EC.In the teaching procedure of EC,IG tasks are designed in different form such as Jigsaw Reading,Filling-In-The-Blank and Opinion Gap activities.Different types of activity need different ways of grouping.At the beginning,discussion and guidance about the topic is held by the teacher so that students' level of the reading topic “i” is the same.Having an understanding of the topic can increase students' confidence and lower their anxiety so that they can better involve into the task.In CC,the teacher follows the structure of the textbook,reading the text first,understanding the material by answering some questions,explaining key words,phrases and sentence structures and at last checking if they grasp the language points by doing some exercises.The fifth chapter is data analysis and discussion.The results of pre-test and post-test are analyzed and compared.Statistics show that after one-semester's English reading teaching,students in EC have made much more progress than students in CC.It indicates that IG tasks in English reading teaching play an important role in improving students' reading ability.As for the attitude toward English reading,students both in EC and CC hold similar attitude toward English reading before the experiment.Many of them think that understanding a reading material means to know all the vocabularies and sentences in it.What's more many of them hold negative attitude toward English reading yet on the other hand,they think English reading is rather important.It implies that a new method of reading teaching is urgent to arouse their interest in English reading.The impact of IG tasks in this aspect can be proved by data analysis of post-questionnaire.IG plays an important role in the attitudinal changes and according to results of post-questionnaire;students' acceptance of IG tasks is quite high.It is because IG tasks provide a communicative environment where all of the students can take an active part in finishing the tasks by communicating and exchanging information.The process of language learning under the application of IG tasks is active so that language acquisition is actualized in a natural way.Therefore,in the last chapter,the conclusion is safely drawn that application of IG tasks has a positive effect in improving college students' reading ability and has a far-reaching impact on language acquisition. |
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