An Action Research Approach To Teaching Reading In Technical Secondary School

"For many students, reading is by far the most important of the four skills in a second language, particularly in English as a second or foreign language" (carrel, 1988). Teaching English reading is currently the focus of much concern. But in the teaching practice, teachers often complain that students are unable to read effectively and correctly in foreign language, and usually neither the teacher nor the students have a clear idea of what actually goes wrong, and so are unable to decide on the proper remedies. So this study attempts to examine the problem and solves it based on action research approach.Teaching action research is a kind of research methods of teaching theories which has been developed in recent years. It is a form of advocating researches in the teaching (Hopkins, 1985); it is a form of self-reflective enquiry (Kemmis, 1982); its result is "to improve reality" (Lewin, 1946).The definition of teaching action research includes the following main points: action research is a systematic self-reflective inquiry; action research is completed through a series of steps; teachers are directly involved in surveying and studying their own teaching problems; the aims of action research are to adjust the teaching practice to maximize effectiveness and improve their understanding of these practices, and situations in which the practices are carried out (Wang Qiang, 2002).The primary focus of the present study is on the implementation and development of an action research approach to teaching English reading abilities as a foreign language in Lanzhou Agricultural School. There were five parts in the thesis. The first part stated the purpose and significance of the experiment; the second part was about literature review; the third part stated mainly the theory of action research and the theory of English reading processing; the fourth part was the experimental design. In the process of improving the students' reading abilities based on action research approach, the preliminary investigation (a questionnaire) indicated that the students were not very skilled at reading mainly because of the following reasons: limited vocabulary; inability to use appropriate reading strategies and skills and lack of insufficient outside reading. Then, the author designed a detailed ten-week plan to solve these problems. In the process of acting, some theories of reading and the critical reading strategies and skills were introduced to the students, and some reading activities were carried out to enlarge the students' vocabulary, improve their reading habits, and increase their outside reading. The fifth part was the conclusion, that is, the students in the experimental class made greater progress in reading compared to the students in the controlled class. Besides, the author reflected on study effects of the students and teacher's self-perfection.Through this study, it is demonstrated that Action Research Approach can better combine theories with practice and fill up the gap between teaching and researching, beneficial not only to teaching and helping the learners to improve their reading skills successfully, but also to teachers' self-development.