A Study On The Teachers’ Mediation Role In English Reading Teaching In Senior High School

General Senior High School English Curriculum Standards(2017 Edition)points out that foreign language education in senior high school is an important process to cultivate citizens’ foreign language quality.As the main way to cultivate students’ foreign language quality,reading has attracted more and more attention.There is no doubt that English teachers play an important role in the development of foreign language quality.Teachers should build up the awareness of mediation and transfer from the role of knowledge disseminator to a mediator who teaches students how to solve problems independently.Current empirical studies on teachers’ mediation role are mostly conducted in universities,while few have been conducted in senior high schools.Based on two core concepts of mediation and ZPD in Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory and Bruner’s theory of scaffolding,the thesis aims at addressing the following two research questions:1.What is teachers’ perception on the mediation role of teachers in English reading teaching in senior high schools?2.What mediation role do teachers perform in the senior high school English reading class?The research subjects are 35 English teachers and 200 students in Nanjing Senior High School in Jiangyin.In the process of the research,questionnaires,interview and classroom observation are utilized to answer the research questions mentioned above.35 English teachers and 200 students participated in the teacher’s questionnaire and student’s questionnaire respectively,the descriptive and inferential statistics of the data collected from which were made by SPSS 18.0.Four teachers participated in the interview.Moreover,12 reading classes were observed according to the classroom observation form.Based on the data collected through questionnaire,interview and classroom observation,results show that:1.The average score of teacher’s questionnaire is 4.41(minimum=1,maximum=5),which indicates that teachers in senior high school have realized the importance of mediation role in reading teaching.Among the 12 questions,“teaching effective reading strategies”(4.66)and “understanding students’ current level and learning needs”(4.63)are unanimously recognized by teachers.However,“presenting learning objectives” gets the lowest mean(3.84),and teachers have different views on this aspect of mediation,the awareness of which needs to be strengthened.2.The average score of student’s questionnaire is 4.13(minimum=1,maximum=5),illustrating that teachers in senior high school actually have performed mediation role in English reading teaching.Combining the results of classroom observation with questionnaires,teachers play the mediation role of “clear instructions”,“a sense of competence” and “teaching effective reading strategies”more frequently than other aspects,which is basically consistent with their perception,while the practice of mediation on “presenting learning objectives”,“goal-setting”and “individuality” is not ideal.Moreover,the average score of the student’s questionnaire(4.13)is lower than that of the teacher’s questionnaire(4.41),illustrating that the practice of teachers’ mediation role is generally not as good as their perception.Teacher’s mediation is of great practical significance in improving teachers’ reading teaching and cultivating students’ autonomous learning ability.The findings of this study have some implications for English reading teaching in senior high schools.Teachers are supposed to practice the role of mediation in English reading classes.For example,the determination of learning objectives,selection of teaching contents and design of teaching links should be student-centered,and suitable help and strategic guidance are supposed to be offered to different students.