Research On Inquiry Teaching Of English Reading In High Schools

Elementary education and curriculum reform in 2001 had advocated three dimensional objectives: 1. knowledge & skill; 2. process & method; 3. emotion,attitude & value, teaching methods such as independent study, cooperation study and inquiry study and some other new curriculum ideas which has caused a wide concern and played a vital role in English reading teaching. However, English reading teaching in reality still use imparting teaching forms and its problems represent as:technical purport, mechanical drill, unilateral culture establishment, circumscribed content and unitary assessment. All these problems result from knowledge imparting theory. English teaching basing on knowledge imparting has separated English knowledge from social and cultural situation, student life and teacher’s experience and knowledge which has caused the dull and passive imparting teaching. On the contrary, inquiry teaching considers knowledge as a dynamic one, emphasizes its change and creation and combines reading knowledge with text, society and culture.Inquiry Teaching of English reading changes the knowledge problem into reading problem and then changes it into a lively and practical problem of students which fully reflects the subject status of students. Teachers will some teaching method such as problem setting, collaborative dialogue, critical thinking, sharing and so on to help student to understand the text, construct knowledge and experience culture in teaching process. At the same time, it will stimulate students’ interest in text reading; develop their personality and reflective thinking and improve their cultural awareness and cultural accomplishment. Basing on inquiry teaching of English reading this study can be divided into four parts as follows:The first part clarifies the origin, research methods and ideas of this paper and analyzes some relative literature review about inquiry teaching of English reading home and abroad so as to understand the present situation of English reading teaching.The second part does a actual survey about the English reading teaching in high school by the method of questionnaire survey of students, interview of teachers and class observation which comes up the problems of present teaching: technical purport,mechanical drill, unilateral culture establishment, circumscribed content and unitary assessment. Analyzing its result reveals the root of problem in English reading teaching.The third part creates the theoretical framework about the connotation and value of inquiry teaching of English reading in high school. Based on the relationship between English knowledge and text, society and culture, the connotation of inquiry teaching of English reading involves: understanding as inquiry, dialogue as inquiry,and experience as inquiry. By text understanding, subject communication and culture experience, inquiry teaching of English reading aims at stimulating students’ interest in text reading; developing their personality and reflective thinking and improving their cultural awareness and cultural accomplishment. This chapter also makes a overview about inquiry teaching of English reading from four aspects: pedagogy,psychology, philosophy and linguistic.The last part discusses the main subject, content and method of inquiry teaching of English reading. The main subject contains the creative student and directive teacher. Text question combining with life, dialogue topic and multi-culture situation are the main content of English inquiry teaching. The teaching methods such as establishing question, using dialogue and cooperation, maintaining critical reflect and exchanging ideas provide a certain reference for practice. In the end, it lists some specific case and then makes a deep analysis and summary.