The Effect Of Production-oriented Approach On Senior High School Students’ English Discourse Reading Competence

Language ability,cultural awareness,thinking quality and learning ability are the four core qualities proposed in the English Curriculum Standards for General Senior High School.In addition,a discourse competence has been added into language ability.Meanwhile,the construction of reading ability is inseparable from the cultivation of discourse competence.Previous research results showed that students’ lack of input to English discourse is one of the important factors affecting students’ reading level.Therefore,it is very important to improve students’ English text reading level through text reading teaching.In recent years,the Production-Oriented Approach has played a driving role to drive the foreign language teaching to develop.In this context,this study aimed to explore the effect of this teaching model on the English discourse ability,and to reflect this effect through data analysis of the results of various surveys.This study specifically answered the following three questions:(1)What is the effect of Production-Oriented Approach on the ability to summarize main ideas?(2)What is the effect of Production-Oriented Approach on the ability to identify writers’ emotional attitudes?(3)What is the effect of Production-Oriented Approach on the ability to make inferences in meanings?The research subjects of this paper were selected from two parallel classes of a senior high school in Nantong City,Jiangsu Province,with a total of 125 students,including 65 students from the experimental class(EC)and 60 students from the control class(CC).Conventional reading teaching was adopted in the CC,and POA was adopted in the EC.The teaching model was designed to carry out a 16-week teaching experiment by consulting,interpreting and sorting out literature.At the same time,attention was paid to observe the reaction of students and communicate with them about their feelings after class.In the first week and the last week of the experiment,reading comprehension test were used to conduct pretest and post-test for the EC and CC respectively,focusing on the changes in students’ proficiency in summarizing the main idea,identifying the writer’s emotional attitudes and making inferences.The results were tested by independent samples t-test using SPSS 26.0.The pretest results showed no significant difference between EC and CC in these three areas,which can be used as two parallel classes to carry out comparative experiments.The evaluation and data processing of the post-test were conducted in the same way as those of the pretest.although both classes improved,there was a significant difference of the two classes,and the reading scores of the EC were significantly higher than those of the CC.From the average score,the ability of the EC to summarizing the main idea is 0.96 points higher than that of the CC,the ability of the EC to identify the writer’s emotional attitudes and values is 0.65 points higher than that of the CC,and the ability of the EC to making inferences is 0.98 points higher than that of the CC.The author in addition to measuring results between the two classes,and respectively compared the score results in pretest and post-test of the EC and that in CC.The result showed that although the two classes both has improved,but only the EC appeared significant difference,and that in CC appeared no significant difference.In addition to carrying out the statistical analysis of the reading test results of the two classes,the author also conducted a questionnaire survey and interview on the EC.The results showed that most of the students held a positive attitude towards the Production-Oriented Approach,and most of them believed that their abilities in these three aspects had been improved.Therefore,the author can draw the following conclusions:(1)The Production-Oriented Approach has a positive effect on the ability to summarize the main idea,and can effectively improve the ability to summarize the main idea.(2)The Production-Oriented Approach has a positive effect on the ability to identify the writer’s emotional attitude and values,and can effectively improve the ability to identify the emotional attitude and values.(3)The Production-Oriented Approach has a positive effect on the ability to make inferences,and can effectively improve the ability to make inferences.In other words,the POA can effectively improve the English discourse reading ability and reading quality of senior high school students,and its influence is more significant than that of traditional reading teaching.In addition,many students expressed their enthusiasm for learning and no longer felt nervous or afraid of speaking English,which indicated that the POA also had a positive impact on students’ English learning motivation.