A Study On English Reading Teaching Based On Thematic Meaning Inquiry In Junior Middle School

Reading is one of the main ways of language input and an important part of language skills.However,at present,there are still some problems in English reading teaching in junior middle school.Most of teachers pay attention to teaching knowledge,but do not pay enough attention to guiding students to explore the thematic meaning of the discourse and cannot form the thematic meaning inquiry as main line in reading teaching,resulting in unsatisfactory English reading teaching effect and students’ disinterest as well as low scores in English reading.In order to solve these problems,based on constructivism theory and combined with requirements of the English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2022)for theme and discourse teaching,this thesis discusses how to apply thematic meaning inquiry to English reading teaching in junior middle school to improve the effect of English reading teaching,and and focuses on the following two questions:(1)What influence does the English reading teaching based on the thematic meaning inquiry have on students’ reading interest in junior middle school?(2)What influence does the English reading teaching based on the thematic meaning inquiry have on students’ reading scores in junior middle school?The constructivism theory emphasizes that classroom teaching should be studentcentered.The subject of cognition is the student who actively constructs the meaning of knowledge and the teacher just helps and promotes the construction.The teachers apply the situation,collaboration and conversation to give full play to students’ initiative and enthusiasm,and finally achieve the purpose of enabling students to construct the meaning of the new knowledge.Based on the constructivism theory,this thesis applies thematic meaning inquiry to English reading teaching in junior middle school and tries to design reading teaching steps: creating a thematic teaching situation,analyzing the discourse structure,constructing and thinking the thematic meaning of the discourse,setting a question chain and sublimating the theme.The teaching steps are designed to stimulate students’ curiosity,and the teacher encourage students to actively participate in class activities,which promotes students to deeply understand the thematic meaning of the discourse and improve the effect of English reading teaching.In order to further verify the effect of applying thematic meaning inquiry to English reading teaching in junior middle school,a four-month teaching experiment is conducted.In the teaching experiment,students in two parallel classes of grade 9 in Nanzhao,Nanyang are selected as the experimental participants and there are 60 students in each class.Class7 is regarded as the experimental class where applied the thematic meaning inquiry to English reading teaching,while Class 8 is the control class and common English reading teaching based on grammar translation is still adopted.In this study,questionnaires,English reading tests and interviews are mainly used to collect data,and the data are statistically analyzed by SPSS27.0.The major findings are as follows:(1)English reading teaching based on thematic meaning inquiry can enhance students’ reading interest in junior middle school.(2)English reading teaching based on thematic meaning inquiry can improve students’ English reading scores in junior middle school.The following teaching implications can be drawn from this study: first of all,teachers should realize the importance about exploring the thematic meaning of the discourse in English reading teaching.What’s more,teachers should actively create teaching situations related to students’ daily life to stimulate students’ reading interest.