A Study Of Theme-based Instruction On English Reading Teaching In Senior High School

Reading plays an important role in English language teaching as one of the essential language skills.However,many problems still exist in actual English reading teaching in senior high school.For example,students lack of interest in reading.Students have no good reading habits.Teachers ignore the cultivation of students’ reading skills.Therefore,it is necessary to find an effective teaching mode to improve current situation.The National English Curriculum Standards for High School(2017ed.)puts forwards thematic contexts as one of the components of the curriculum content,and teaching content and activities should be carried out around the theme of discourse,which provides a new teaching mode for English reading teaching in senior high school.Theme-based instruction uses reading discourse as the basis,around a meaningful theme,and designs teaching tasks that lead students to explore the theme,so as to achieve meaning construction in the tasks and achieve teaching goals.Previous researches on the effectiveness of theme-based instruction have been massive.However,most researchers do the experimental research to apply theme-based instruction to college while the study of theme-based instruction is rarely used in middle school.At the same time,scholars are more inclined to conduct research on the improvement of comprehensive skills,but there is a lack of researches on reading skills.Therefore,this study applies theme-based instruction on English reading teaching in senior high school with the aim of answering the following questions:1.What’s the effect of the theme-based instruction on students’ English reading scores?2.What’s the effect of the theme-based instruction on students’ skill of understanding the gist in reading?3.What’s the effect of the theme-based instruction on students’ skill of inferring in reading?This study uses 105 students in two parallel classes in Hebei Xianxian No.5 Middle School as research subjects.English reading teaching of the experimental class adopts theme-based instruction and the traditional teaching method is carried out in the control class.In order to explore the effects of theme-based instruction on students’ reading scores,students’ skill of understanding the gist and inferring in reading,tests and interview as research instruments are used to obtain the data.The author conducts pre-test and post-test in the two parallel classes and analyzes the test results obtained with SPSS 23.0.After the experiment,the author randomly selects 6 representatives from the experimental class for interview and further analyzes the interview results.The research results show that students in the experimental class have improved their reading scores,the reading skill of understanding the gist and inferring by applying theme-based instruction after the three-month experiment.Moreover,the interview results further prove that students’ English reading skills are developed after applying theme-based instruction.Therefore,it can be declared that the application of theme-based instruction in English reading teaching is effective to improve students’ reading scores,the skill of understanding the gist and inferring in reading.It is hoped that the application of theme-based instruction could solve the problems existing in the teaching of English reading in senior high school and promote the development of English reading teaching.