Effects Of Interactive Reading Model On Junior High School Students’ English Reading Proficiency

Reading,as one of the four language skills,is an important way for people to get information and exchange ideas.The New English Curriculum Standard for Junior High School(2011)says that students should achieve the goals of Level Five in reading by graduation.In recent years,the proportion of reading comprehension in High School Entrance Examination for English is gradually increasing to half of the total score.However,in today’s English class,most teachers are still using the traditional reading model,which focuses on the language knowledge,making it difficult for students to improve their English reading ability.In recent years,researchers mainly apply Interactive Reading Model to English reading teaching in universities,vocational colleges and senior high schools,however there are relatively few studies on the applications of Interactive Reading Model in junior high school’s English reading teaching.Based on Schema Theory,Constructivism Theory and Interactive Hypothesis,this study tries to apply Interactive Reading Model to junior high school English reading teaching,trying to answer the following two questions:(1)What effects does Interactive Reading Model have on junior high school students’ English reading proficiency on the whole?(2)What effects does Interactive Reading Model have on junior high school students’ English reading proficiency in terms of identifying details,guessing word meanings,summarizing main ideas and making inferences?The research adopted a quantitative research design,with the participants of 80 students from two parallel classes of Grade 9 in Guli Junior High School in Jiangsu Province.The teaching experiment lasted for three months.Before the experiment,a pre-test was carried out in the two classes to determine which one was the experimental class(EC)and which was the control class(CC).In the experiment,EC adopted Interactive Reading Model and CC employed the traditional reading model.After the experiment,a post-test was conducted in the two classes and the data was analyzed by SPSS 22.0.The major findings of the research were listed as follows:(1)Interactive Reading Model could effectively improve junior high school students’English reading proficiency on the whole;(2)Interactive Reading Model had positive effects on improving students’ English reading proficiency in terms of guessing word meanings,summarizing main ideas and making inferences,but had no obvious function in improving students’English reading proficiency in terms of identifying details.Some pedagogical implications are advanced:(1)in order to carry out Interactive Reading Model effectively,teachers should equip themselves with adequate knowledge of Interactive Reading Model;(2)while teaching,teachers should create an interactive learning environment for students to participate in the class,express themselves and communicate with others;(3)reading strategies should be taught to help students improve their reading proficiency.Some limitations and suggestions are proposed:(1)since the sample was small,the subsequent researches could increase the sample size to make the research results more scientific;(2)the improvement of students’ reading proficiency is a long process,so the future researches could extend the experiment time;(3)since some other factors like learners’ reading habits and learning attitude that may influence the experiment result were not considered in the study,the future researchers should strengthen the relevant theoretical and practical knowledge in the follow-up research.