An Investigation Into Students’ Participation In Senior English Reading Class

Class participation is an indispensable procedure in English teaching and learning. The quality of anEnglish class is determined by the degree of students’ class participation. To the senior students in modernsociety, reading is one of the essential skills the senior students must master, and there is an inseparablerelationship between the improvement of reading ability and the effectiveness of students’ participation. Byparticipating in the reading activities, students could learn to acquire the reading skills and the recognitionand application of reading strategies. With the reformation plan of the national college entranceexamination in English, English learning will pay more attention to the development of the ability ofapplication and the traditional teacher-centered class will also be gradually replaced by students-centeredclass. What’s more, English reading which is regarded as one of the means of input in language learning isa prerequisite factor of English output. So whether the students could participate in the reading classactivities, to a great degree, determines the application of what they have learned in English class.This thesis attempts to explore the current situation of students participation and the internal andexternal factors affecting the degree of students’ participation based on which the researcher comes up withsome suggestions for students’ active participation. This thesis is designed to investigate the following3questions:(1) What are the status quo concerning students’ participation in senior reading class?(2) What are the main factors affecting students’ participation in senior English reading class?(3) What measures can be taken to promote students’ positive participation?The research methodologies of this thesis are classroom observation, questionnaire and informalinterview. In the view of the theory of social interactionism, the interaction hypothesis, constructionism andhumanism, the researcher carries out the investigation. The subjects of this thesis are123students and2head teachers in Grade One from Xinxiang No.2Senior High School of Henan province. It takes theresearcher about one semester to collect the data for this research. Having analyzed the collected data, theauthor draws the following findings: Students’ participation in the process of pre-reading, while-readingand post-reading have different characteristics and in different degree in the aspect of behavior, emotion and cognition. According to this, some suggestions are provided for both students and teachers separately inorder to encourage the students to actively participate in the reading class activities and to improve theeffectiveness of English teaching and learning.This thesis consists of the following five parts: the first part gives a brief introduction of the thesiswhich includes the research questions, purpose and significance. The second part is the literature review ofreading and class participation both abroad and at home and the related teaching theories. The third partintroduces the research subjects, methodology and procedure. Part four deals with and makes an analysis ofthe collected data. The last part arrives at a conclusion of this thesis and lists some valuable measures andlimitation of it.