Applying Implicit Stratified Instruction To English Reading Teaching In Junior High School

Reading is an important way to learn a language and gain knowledge.It can significantly improve readers’ language abilities.As a result,reading instruction is an important part of English instruction.The psychological process of the interaction between readers’ thoughts and reading materials is known as reading comprehension(Goodman,1967).Teachers encounter significant challenges in improving students’ reading ability during the teaching process because of students’ different learning aptitude,styles,and experiences.In traditional English reading instruction,most teachers remain to apply the same teaching goals to guide students at different levels by the same reading activities,and adopt the same evaluation standards to evaluate students with varying levels of performances.Therefore,many teaching activities are unable to meet students’ individual needs,and students’ reading motivation and interest are constantly decreasing,widening the gap between students’ reading ability.Compared with traditional instruction,stratified instruction requires teachers to realize students’ differences and design different teaching activities based on students’ differences.Therefore,stratified instruction can meet students’ individual needs and promote students at different levels to develop different abilities.Stratified instruction is able to meet the students’ individual needs,however,many researchers believe that the obvious grouping of students seriously hurts students’ self-esteem,resulting in a decline in students’ learning motivation and interest(Mao,2000;Liang,2010;Liu & Lu,2019).These potential problems can be solved with implicit stratified instruction.In order to improve students’ English reading abilities and strengthen their reading motivation,this paper explores the application of the implicit stratified instruction to English reading class in junior high school.Focusing on the following two questions:(1)Can implicit stratified instruction improve junior high school students’ reading grades and narrow the gap of junior students’ reading grades?(2)What effects does the application of implicit stratified instruction in junior high school English reading instruction may have on students’ reading motivation?The study carried out an 18-week teaching experiment among 100 students from two classes of grade eight in a foreign language school in northern Jiangxi Province.The students were tested and surveyed before and after the experiment to investigate their reading scores and reading motivation,and the data collected were compared and analyzed by using SPSS software.The results show that:(1)Implicit stratified instruction can improve students’ reading performance.Comparing the reading performance of students at three different levels,it is found that students in the basic level(level C)have the most obvious improvement,followed by the development level(level B),and the improvement level(level A)has relatively small changes,so implicit stratified instruction can effectively narrow the gap between the scores.(2)Implicit stratified instruction plays a positive role in stimulating the students’ reading motivation.Meanwhile,the students’ reading motivation is transformed from external motivation to internal motivation,which helps to create a good learning atmosphere.Based on the integration,generalization and exploration of previous research methods and results,the paper validates the necessity and feasibility of implicit stratified instruction in junior high school English reading instruction,and provides some theoretical basis and practical guidance for relevant research,which serves a specific reference function.However,while solving some problems,the study inevitably has the following limitations and shortcomings:(1)The experimental period is short and the scope is not wide enough.(2)The stratification of students in the teaching process is not comprehensive enough,and there is no dynamic stratification.(3)The teacher paid too much attention to students at level B and level C,and the cultivation of level A is insufficient.In view of the shortcomings in the research,the paper puts forward some suggestions for future research.