Research On The Application Effect Of The Layered Teaching Method In The English Reading Teaching Of Junior High School

English learning occupies a very important position in all stages of learning.English reading which is one of the main ways for most Chinese students to learn English contains three aspects of meaning,the literal meaning,the deep meaning and the associative meaning(Wan,2011).And reading comprehension occupies a large proportion in almost all kinds of English tests.Therefore,most middle school English teachers attach great importance to the teaching of English reading.However,there still exists a big problem in the current teaching of English reading in junior middle school.Students’ English learning ability is different,but under the class teaching system,most teachers still adopted the same teaching goals,class activities and after-school reading tasks based on the average level of students.Therefore,it caused that high reading level students thought English reading was boring and without challenge,while low reading level students lost interest and confidence in English because they couldn’t keep pace with the class.So the stratified teaching method is imperative in English reading teaching.However,there were plenty of theories and theses discussing about the stratified teaching,but most of them were about English vocabulary and writing instruction,much less about English reading teaching.So this paper mainly focuses on the effects of stratified teaching on English reading instruction.Under stratified teaching method,students are divided into three levels—high level(C level),middle level(B level)and basic level(A level)according to their English learning achievements and learning potentials.Then teachers set the appropriate teaching objectives,in-class tasks and after-school reading assignments depending on learning abilities of different level’s students.On the basis of the "Zone of the Proximal Development" theory,"Mastery Learning" theory and the "Optimization of Teaching Process" theory,the author attempts to implement the experiment with the subjects from two parallel classes of grade seven in XXX Middle School.The teacher employed the stratified teaching mode in the experimental class with 46 students while the traditional method in the controlled class with 48 students.It aimed at testifying the effects of stratified teaching on students’reading interest,English learning autonomy and reading proficiency.The specific research questions contain:(1)What are the students’ attitudes toward the stratified teaching mode in learning English reading?(2)How can stratified teaching mode affect students’ English learning autonomy?(3)What are the effects of stratified teaching mode onto students’ English reading proficiency?After the experimental research,the following conclusions could be drawn:(1)Students’ interest in English reading are aroused through implementing the stratified teaching mode.(2)The application of stratified teaching mode has enhanced students’autonomy in English learning.(3)Through adopting stratified teaching,students’English reading has been improved significantly.Therefore,it is very necessary for more researchers to study this method in English reading instruction.However,due to the limited knowledge of the author and some other objective factors,such as the selection of the reading materials,the standard of adjusting the students into different levels and the increase of teachers’ workload.Therefore,the research on the effects in English reading of junior middle school requires more and further studies.