An Empirical Study On The Application Of Genre-Based Teaching Approach To English Reading Teaching In Vocational School

In the process of learning, the cultivation of reading ability is the key to improving vocational school students’ language comprehensive abilities. At present, in the PRETCO, the part of reading accounts for 35%. It can be seen that reading comprehension has become one of the most important goals of teaching and learning. However, the traditional teaching method is still teacher-centered and focuses on solving the problems of vocabulary and grammar, which constrains the development of students’ reading ability. How to teach reading effectively has been a question which researchers and teachers concern about. Since the mid-1980 s, English researchers pay more attention to genre-based approach. It aims at helping students understand genre’s social function and communicative purpose, guiding students to attain information based on generic structure and language features and then improving students’ reading proficiency. Therefore,to improve the present situation, this research tries to apply the genre-based teaching approach to reading teaching.When studying the application of the genre-based teaching approach in vocational school reading instruction, it aims to answer the questions in the following:1) Can genre-based teaching approach improve vocational school students’ reading proficiency?2) Can genre-based teaching approach lead to improvement in students’ good reading habit forming and reading strategy using?The study participants are 78 business English majors from Bohai Shipbuilding Vocational School of Huludao in Liaoning province. This research lasts about 4 months from September, 2014 to December, 2014. And this research shows the experimental sample, experimental procedures and experimental instruments, which contains two reading proficiency tests, two questionnaires, interviews and classroom observation. The results obtained from the two reading proficiency tests show that students in the experimental class have improved reading comprehension proficiency after applying the genre-based teaching approach. After analyzing the two questionnaires, we can see that genre-based teaching approach can lead to improvement in students’ good reading habit forming and reading strategy using. All in all, the findings generated from the current study imply that genre-based teaching approach has positive influence on improving students’ reading proficiency, and it can be applied to English reading in vocational school.The paper is divided into five chapters: chapter one is introduction, chapter two is literature review, chapter three is research methodology, chapter four is data collection and analysis and chapter five is conclusion.