Action Research Into How A Pre-service Teacher Teaches Dying To Be Thin Well

This study is intended to explore how a pre-service teacher taught Dying to Be Thin well through action research. The theories on which this study is based are constructivism learning theory, humanism and social interactionism. Its practical significance is for pre-service teachers to draw more attention to research in action, research on action and research for action so as to improve their teaching practice.The participants of the study were a pre-service English teacher and the classes where she conducted her teaching practice. The instruments employed in this study were mainly classroom observation, teaching journals and interview, which described the whole process of her teaching of this lesson. The data were collected before class, in class and after class respectively. Data analysis involved two steps:classification and comparison.The study involved two cycles of action research. The first cycle was made up of problem identification, plan making, plan implementation, assessments and reflections. The second cycle consisted of problem re-identification, plan revising, revised-plan implementation. re-assessments and re-reflections.This study has yielded the following major findings:First, as a pre-service English teacher, she had a half-baked understanding of teaching, especially focusing on the teaching material, one of the three basic components, which made her teaching plan heavily scheduled. In the process of plan implementation, her nervousness and her inability to predict the happenings in class resulted in the partial failure of this lesson, like unfulfilment of the teaching tasks. This indicates that there is a gap to bridge between theory and practice in teaching, to which great attention is to be paid.Second, her reflections on the first cycle of action research made her revise her teaching plan. She realized that she should systemize the teaching content and make the teaching activities connect to each other cohesively. With the help of the tutor and her father, she made it. However, in the process of plan implementation, she paid so much attention to teaching, which resulted in the dull atmosphere. This indicates that a well-designed teaching plan cannot100%guarantee the successful teaching and that some other factors should be taken into consideration, like students’learning. Third, in the second-cycle class she basically achieved the teaching objectives of language skills and learning strategies, but she still had a long way to go in arousing students’ interest, developing their critical thinking and cultivating their positive values in life, which shows that how to teach a lesson well is so complicated that it involves different aspects of teaching, learners and teaching methods.This study is limited in three ways. Firstly, there is much space for the improvement of the instruments employed in this study. The author’s inexperienced observation might result in some points missing in the study. Besides, sometimes after a whole day’s work, the author was too tired to record all her thoughts and feelings in her teaching journals in time. Although she tried to recall the following day. she could inevitably forget some points. Secondly, the participant selected in this study was a novice teacher; sometimes she lacked the ability to fully identify the key links in the process of action research. Thirdly, due to the author’s superficial academic level. more research needs to be done to arrive at a more convincing claim in terms of depth and breadth.