A Study On The Application Of Reciprocal Teaching Mode To English Reading Teaching For English Majors

Reciprocal teaching is a kind of reading teaching mode in which teacher and students assume the teaching role alternately and apply the four reading strategies namely predicting, clarifying, questioning and summarizing into group talking to gain meaning from text. It was firstly presented by A. S.Palincsar in 1982 and developed by the cooperation with Ann. L.Brown. A lot of studies have proved the effectiveness of reciprocal teaching on reading teaching in foreign countries, Taiwan and Hong Kong.In light of the effect of reciprocal teaching in other places, the writer especially conducted this empirical research.In this way can the writer test the effect of reciprocal teaching to enhance college students’ English reading in Chinese educational environment and improve the college English reading methods. In order to reach this purpose, there are several related questions to answer:1 Whether the reciprocal teaching mode can improve the English reading ability of college students in English major or not?2 Whether the reciprocal teaching mode can increase the pace of English reading for college students in English major or not?3 Whether the reciprocal teaching mode can enhance the interest of English reading for college students in English major or not?The research is implemented in the way of non randomized controlled group design with pre—posttest and questionnaire. The subjects in the research come from two sophomore classes in English major. One class forms the experimental group accepting reciprocal teaching method and the other class forms the control group gaining the normal teaching pattern. The comparative teaching lasts eight weeks. Students in the two groups accept pretest and posttest of English reading both in the beginning and after the experiment. And subjects in the experiment group do the questionnaire of reciprocal teaching to help the teacher get feedback. The results of the research are as follows:(1) The reciprocal teaching mode effectively improves the English reading ability of college students in English major.(2) The reciprocal teaching mode decreases the English reading time of college students in English major.(3) The reciprocal teaching mode enhances the interest of English reading greatly for college students in English major.This research witnesses the effect of reciprocal teaching on improving students’ English reading ability and interest. Teachers get teaching inspiration and students gain benefits by using it. It dawned on the teacher that it is important for teachers to teach students reading strategies. And it also can be used as a new English reading teaching method and lay the foundation for cultivating student of English major in the future. The reciprocal teaching mode encourages students to cooperate and communicate with each other and makes students regulate their whole reading process. In this way, students prompt their English reading efficiency and interest. For this it is necessary to popularize the reciprocal teaching in Chinese English reading class and make more teachers adopt it and more students gain benefit from it.