An Investigation Of The Current Situation Of High School English Reading Instruction From The Perspective Of Thematic Meaning

The Ministry of Education’s English Curriculum Standards for General High Schools(2017 Edition 2020 Revision)states that the English curriculum for high schools should“cultivate students’ cross-cultural communication awareness and international perspective”.However,Chinese high school students’ comprehensive language skills are of slow development at present,and one of the main reasons is that they do not understand well the thematic meaning in their learning.Therefore,English teaching from the perspective of thematic meaning has attracted widespread attention in the education field and become a trend in the development of high school reading instruction.Since reading instruction from the perspective of thematic meaning is a relatively new educational concept,and the relevant research on it is still at its initial stage,the current situation of its application in reading instruction still needs to be further explored.In order to investigate the current situation of high school English reading instruction from the perspective of thematic meaning,this study,with constructivist learning theory and zone of proximal development theory as the theoretical basis,by adopting a survey method based on questionnaires and supplemented by classroom observation and interview methods,carries out a one-semester study with 50 English teachers in a high school in Meizhou City,Guangdong Province,aiming to investigate the current situation of English reading instruction from the perspective of thematic meaning with the following four questions:(1)What are the attitudes of high school English teachers toward reading instruction from the perspective of thematic meaning?(2)On what basis do high school English teachers interpret reading texts from the perspective of thematic meaning?(3)How do high school English teachers explore the thematic meaning of discourse from the perspective of thematic meaning?(4)How do high school English teachers implement reading activities from the perspective of thematic meaning?The study finds that:(1)Most of the high school English teachers are aware of the importance of reading instruction from the perspective of thematic meaning,but some are still cautious for two reasons: First,they are worried about distracting too much energy.Second,they lack confidence in their own knowledge reserves and abilities.(2)Most of the teachers tend to use teaching reference books and multimedia resources for discourse interpretation,rather than taking the New Curriculum Standards as the primary basis for discourse interpretation.(3)There still exists a serious bifurcation in the approach to exploring the thematic meaning,although most teachers’ performances meet the requirements;in addition,a majority of the teachers fail to implement the idea of what-how-why text analysis and to create a reasonably appropriate context.(4)In terms of activity implementation,activities are unsatisfactorily set up by most of the teachers,which lack integrity,graduation and relevance,and are not sufficiently prepared either.Based on the findings,the study offers four suggestions on how to better implement English reading instruction from the perspective of thematic meaning,while also reflecting on the limitations of the study and offering perspectives for the future.