A Study On The Learner-Centered Reading Instruction Model In Junior High School

Reading is the one of major means that people get knowledge and information. For students in junior high school, reading is by far the most important four language skills that are listening, speaking, reading and writing. It can improve the learners' linguistic competence. Therefore, reading instruction has been emphasized by teachers in junior high school. The main problem of English teaching at junior high school is how to develop the students' reading ability and their language skill. This is the main direction of the English teaching reform in junior high school.In this thesis, two surveys of the teachers' teaching and the students' English learning have made aiming to get a general picture of English teaching and learning, especially relevant to English reading there. The results show that it has taken much more time on reading instruction nowadays, but the effect is not well. The teachers are the central point during the reading class. The students "cannot see the wood for the trees" while reading. Literal meaning of the text is laid focus on by the students but the gist of the text is usually overlooked. It is hard for students to grasp the inferential meaning of the text.With the reform of the educational system, the traditional teaching model centralized on "teachers" has been gradually changed into modern teaching model centralized on "students", which advocates "interactive class". According to the theory of learner-centeredness and the experience of teaching English for over ten years, the author studies and discusses the learner-centered reading instruction model in junior high school. (LCRIM)The paper analyses some researches at home and abroad on LCRIM and has expounded the definition of LCRIM and its two basic theories that are constructivism learning theory and humanistic learning theory. The paper reviews the reading theories and proposes a new, learner-centered model of reading instruction after it analyses literal comprehension, inferential comprehension and critical comprehension in reading. For reading instruction in junior high school, the teaching aim of LCRIM is that students finish reading activities or tasks actively to improve their reading comprehension ability under the teachers' direction. It emphasizes the dominant place of the students while reading. The teachers are the conductors, the organizers and the directors of the reading instruction. On the other hand, the students are the main body of the reading activities; they aren't confined in what task to finish but demonstrate the processes of finishing tasks, thinking and researching. Because of students' participating in the whole teaching and learning process, they take active part in the reading, thus their reading competence can be improved.In order to prove LCRIM is more suitable for junior students, the author intends to conduct an experiment in teaching Go for it with LCRIM. Different reading strategies, reading activities and activities procedures are designed in this paper. The whole reading instructions are divided into three parts: pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading. Pre-reading includes activating students' background knowledge, predicating and so on. While-reading includes skimming, scanning, overall and detailed understanding of the text, designing the questions of the text, guessing the meanings of the words and so on. Post-reading means to connect the information in and out of the text, do some oral and written exercise about the text, evaluate the effect of reading, the processes of reading and the strategies of reading. All the activities should meet the need of the students. Students are the center of reading and they should be given many more activities to practice reading and thinking, thus they can improve the reading comprehension ability.The experiment for LCRIM has been conducted for two terms among the students in Grade Nine in Wuhan 23rd Junior High School. The author herself has put the model into classroom practice and has compared the performance of the experimental group to the performance of the control group. According to the result, the students in the experimental group have better inferential ability and critical ability in reading comprehension than those in the control group.