Insight From New English Curriculum Standards:A Research On Secondary School Teachers’ Beliefs And Practices In Effective EFL Reading Teaching

Nowadays, the study on teachers’beliefs has been a hot issue in the field of teachers’ education and professional development, because teachers’beliefs are a direct and important factor that influences teachers’teaching. Borg (2003) held that English classroom teaching was affected by a wide variety of elements from various perspectives, but from the perspective of inner causes, the most direct factor which influenced teacher’s classroom teaching was teachers’beliefs. However, the concept of teachers’beliefs is abstract and macroscopical, so we have to narrow it down and to make an exploration from a certain aspect, which will be more significant and meaningful in EFL teaching. Therefore, the author intended to explore teachers’beliefs and behaviors in effective EFL reading teaching. The thesis is about three questions:1) what beliefs about effective EFL reading teaching do secondary school teachers hold? 2) How do their beliefs about effective EFL reading teaching influence their practices in classroom teaching? 3) What factors influence teachers’beliefs about effective EFL reading teaching?This thesis is a case study about teachers’beliefs and practices in effective EFL reading teaching in secondary school. The author adopted qualitative and quantitative research methods. This thesis collected data through teachers’interview, classroom observation and students’questionnaires. In this thesis, the author examined three teachers’ beliefs and practices in effective EFL reading teaching in secondary school through teachers’pre-lesson interview, classroom observation, post-lesson interview and questionnaires of 148 students and explored the factors that influenced teachers’beliefs and practices in effective EFL reading teaching in secondary school.The research presented three main findings as following:1) All of the three teachers held that effective EFL reading teaching in secondary school referred to students enabled to grasp the main idea and detailed information from articles. Besides, every teacher had their own focuses such as Miss Lei focused on the training of English reading skills and strategies, but Miss Guo focused on the development of students’emotion through reading.2) The three teachers’beliefs, to a large extent, were in line with their practices in effective EFL reading teaching, because their teaching practices were decided by their thoughts and beliefs. However, there is a gap between their beliefs in effective EFL reading teaching and their practices.3) There are two kinds of factors influenced their beliefs and practices in effective EFL reading teaching.The first sort is the limitations of their teachers own which was related with teachers’ learning experience, teaching experience and working attitude. The second sort is the contextual factors:students’English proficiency, the complexity of classroom teaching and the pressure from the current educational system which mainly referred to national college entrance examination.The author hoped to provide some materials and suggestions for English teachers in effective EFL reading teaching through the results of this research. This research results help teachers to conduct a reflection on their beliefs in effective EFL reading teaching and then to change and improve their reading teaching. Besides, there are some implications for institutional leader which aimed to cause their concern in effective EFL reading teaching and to give rise to some reforms or transformations to improve the teaching quality of effective EFL reading teaching.