A Study On The Application Of Pre-reading Task In Junior High School English Reading Teaching

In junior high school,reading,as one of the four skills,occupies an essential position in EFL teaching,during which the pre-reading task is the beginning and first step of an effective English reading teaching,so its importance can’t be ignored.However,many teachers can’t properly design the pre-reading tasks or just skip this step.Thus this paper aims to study the application of pre-reading task in English reading teaching and its effects on English reading process and achievement.This paper mainly addresses the following three questions: 1.What influence will pre-reading task have on the students’ performance in class? 2.How will pre-reading task affect students’ reading motivation,reading anxiety and use of reading strategy? 3.Will pre-reading task help students improve their reading achievement? What kinds of reading ability will be influenced? In order to answer these questions,the methods of classroom observation,questionnaire survey,interview and teaching experiment were used in the study.A teaching experiment was carried out in two parallel classes in Grade Eight.One class is experimental class and the other is controlled class.Each class has 30 students and the total number is 60.This experiment lasted one semester.The students in experimental class received various pre-reading tasks according to the different texts such as games,predicting,free talking,introduction of the background and so on while such tasks were not be given in the controlled class.After the experiment,it was found that students would step into the later reading study more quickly with clear learning objectives and background knowledge.They preferred to pay more attention to some key details rather than think about the new words.The atmosphere of the classroom became more active.At the same time,their answers to the questions are more creative and critical instead of being limited by the text.By analyzing data from the questionnaire survey through SPSS,it was drawn that the application of pre-reading tasks has a positive effect on increasing reading motivation,lowering reading anxiety and using the proper reading strategies when students are faced with different texts.The result of interview indicated that students can read with a clearer propose and more expectations with the help of pre-reading tasks.By comparing data from pre-test and post-test between the experimental class and controlled class,it was found that the reading achievement of experimental classis better than controlled class.Specifically,the reading abilities of evaluating the text,inferring,identifying the styles and understanding the logical relation between the paragraphs of experimental class have improved more noticeably.From what has been mentioned above,it can be seen that pre-reading task has its own important function.Not only does it guide students into the text and reading class quickly,but also arouse their reading interest.If we skip it,students will be forced to read the text passively.Therefore,the teacher needs to pay much attention to the needs of the students and the features of the text while teaching reading.Pre-reading task can facilitate reading teaching and change students’ reading styles,from passive reading to active reading so that students will become better readers and real participants in the reading class.