A Study Of Differentiated Instruction In The Teaching Of English Reading At Senior High School

Differentiated instruction is a kind of teaching theory which was put forward by American scholar Tomlinson in order to solve the deep-rooted problems existing in classroom teaching. Differentiated instruction emphasizes that class teaching should be established within students’individual differences to meet students’ individual needs, promoting each student to achieve his or her development to the largest extent. The research aimed at testifying whether differentiated instruction can improve the Chinese students’English reading level, furthermore, well guiding the practice.Based on such aim, according to freshmen’s English learning differences, the author explored and discussed differentiated instruction in high school English reading teaching from both theoretical and practical aspects in this thesis, with the guidance of Tomlinson’s Differentiated Instruction Theory. And the author carried out a teaching experiment by applying differentiated instruction in English reading teaching in Yi Qi High School of Ordos for about a semester from September2013to early January2014. Class7was regarded as the experimental class while Class6as the comparative class. First of all, through questionnaires, testing methods, and interviews, the author carried on the investigation about the students’ English basis, their current reading situation and interests, which were acted as the raw data. The grouping of the students was based on their interests. Secondly, the differentiated reading teaching was implemented in the "second class". Different groups of different interests in the experimental class got different reading materials with different goals and requirements while those were the same in the control class, in which the traditional teaching was adopted. The author analyzed the collected data vertically and horizontally by applying SPSS19.0. At the beginning of the experiment, by comparing with the pre-tests between the experimental class and the control class with t-test, the author found that there was no significant difference (p>0.05) and the average score of the experimental class was below that of the control class, but its standard deviation was above that of the control class. That is to say, before the experiment, the English reading achievement of the students in the experimental class was a little inferior to that of the students in the control class. After the experiment, through comparing with the pre and post tests of the experimental class and the control class respectively with t-test, the author found that there existed significant difference (p<0.05) between the pre-test and the post-test of the experimental class as well as that of the control class, which stated that the scores of both the experimental class and the control class have increased. Then from the comparison of the post-tests between the experimental class and the control class with t-test, the author found that there was significant difference (p<0.05), and from the comparison of the average score, after the experiment the average score of the experimental class was higher than that of the control class, and its standard deviation was lower than that of the control class, which proved the improving range in the experimental class was obviously larger than that of the control class, moreover the English reading ability of the students in the experimental class exceeded that of the students in the control class. Thus, differentiated instruction indeed played a positive role in students’English reading. After the experiment, the same survey and an interview were conducted in the experimental class. Combining all these results, the author found that differentiated instruction had a positive impact on students’ learning interest, learning motivation and learning results comparing with the traditional teaching model. And to some extent, differentiated instruction could not only improve the students’ English learning achievements but also greatly promote the relation between teachers and students. What could be proved is that the application of differentiated instruction in the teaching of English reading at senior high school was feasible.