A Study On The Differentiated Instruction In Junior Middle School English Reading Teaching In The Task-based Classroom

The traditional teacher-centered instructional mode has been adopted generally in ourmiddle schools for a long time. But with deepened thoughts and examination, manydeficiencies can be found in the traditional teaching mode such as, ignoring the differences ofstudents in the aspects of learning interests, motivations, and objectives, causing polarizationof students in the learning. And for now, traditional teaching methods can no longer meet therequirements of modern foreign language teaching. To respect the differences of students andmotivate students’ interests in English learning is an urgent question which English teachersshould be concerned about.There is no exception in regarding students’ differences in middle school English readingteaching. English reading teaching plays a key role of promoting students’ English learning,which account for a large part of English classroom instruction in middle schools. The authorconducted a three-month teaching experiment in a middle school in order to seek a solution.The research aims at implementation of the differentiated instruction based on task-basedclassroom in the middle school English reading teaching, to explore its feasibility andeffectiveness in the context of English teaching in middle school.The innovation of this paper lies in the combination of the differentiated instruction withthe task-based approach and applied it in the middle school English reading teaching. Up tonow, many researchers are focus on either the differentiation instruction or the task-basedapproach, but few of them have combined the two approaches in the context of middleschool English teaching. The differentiated instruction refers to considering the actual basicsof students; include such strategies implemented in instruction planning as flexible grouping,tiering activities, etc. In the task-based classroom, the core of teaching is performing thetasks. The design of tasks takes the real world as references, and students should be makeefforts in completing the tasks. For the purpose of promoting the target language learning,advancing the English reading proficiency of students in the process of doing tasks has beenproved an effective path. Compared with applying the two approaches separately, theapproach combined is more efficient to promote the proficiency of English reading.This thesis starts with the research background and research significance, introducing thedefinition of differentiated instruction and reviewed the development of differentiatedinstruction domestic and abroad, and the theoretical basis of differentiated instruction ofmiddle school of English teaching based on the Constructivism Learning Theory, Theory ofMultiple Intelligences, and Taxonomy of Educational Objectives of Bloom, and thenexpounded the definition of task, task component, and the connotation of implementing the differentiated instruction in task-based classroom.The subjects of the experiment are from two parallel classes that the writer teaches: theexperimental class and the control class. The experimental class adopted the differentiatedinstruction in the task-based classroom, and the control class adopting the traditional teachingmode while the control class was taught with traditional method. The experimentalinstruments of this research conclude questionnaires, tests, observations and interviews.Based on analysis of the statistics, the thesis claims that the differentiated instruction in thetask-based classroom has distinct advantages over the traditional teaching method and provedits feasibility and effectiveness in teaching English reading.However, some limitations and difficulties of differentiated instruction based ontask-based classroom are found in the experiment. It still remains to be improved and furtherstudied in the future research.