A Study On The Application Of Stratified Teaching In The English Reading Of Rural Junior Middle School

Along with the advancement of the curriculum reform, the junior middle schoolEnglish teaching has changed a lot. The English examination form is improving along withthe era development, and the demand on the students’ listening and speaking skills is alsobecoming higher and higher. However, the listening and speaking abilities of the ruraljunior middle school students are worrisome. The students are good at written English, buttheir spoken English is very poor. It is difficult for them to communicate in English, andthey even have difficulty in reading a short passage fluently. Most of the students repeatEnglish texts by rote or recite them without much understanding from memory and theteachers place much extra emphasis on their students’ written exercises while ignoringtheir oral reading, which lead to the students’ dumb English and greatly reduce the effect ofEnglish learning. Reading, a kind of creative activity, puts words into spoken language,which is the bridge between written language and oral language. As the foundation ofconversation, effective reading can enhance the listening ability, cultivate English languagesense, improve English writing ability and improve the learning efficiency. As part of thenine-year compulsory education, rural junior high schools enroll all school-age studentsand divide students into parallel classes, so there is a big gap among students of the sameclass in learning attitude, motivation and school records. In the traditional class, teacherscan hardly pay attention to every student. By the stratified teaching, teachers scientificallydivide the students into groups of similar levels and treat them differently. With appropriatestratified strategies, each student can get the best development and improvement. Therefore,this author attempts to adopt stratified teaching to explore the English reading teaching inthe rural junior middle school.Under the guidance of the principle of teaching students in accordance with theiraptitude and the Zone of Proximal Development theory, the author of this thesis carried outan application research on stratified English teaching in Wujiang Tuncun Junior MiddleSchool of Suzhou from September,2013to June,2014, with Class3of Grade Threechosen as the experimental group and Class1of Grade Three as the control group. The author covertly and dynamically grouped students into three levels (A, B and C) accordingto the students’ abilities, cognitive levels, intelligence, interest and learning potency. Alsoin class, teaching goals, designs, guidance, assignment and evaluation on students werealso grouped. The author evaluated the results of the experiment with the questionnaire,achievement tests and interviews.After analyzing the results of the assessment data, this author has found that comparedwith the traditional reading teaching model, stratified reading teaching plays a big role inpromoting the development of students’ learning motivation, interest, attitude, methods,objectives and self-confidence, and it can also greatly improve the learning efficiency andthe quality of learning. Through the experimental research, the author has got to know thepresent situation of the students’ English reading in the rural junior middle school andfound that stratified teaching can help students overcome their fear of English reading,regain confidence, improve the learning efficiency. The application of stratified teaching inthe English reading teaching of junior middle schools has proved to be quite favorable tostudents’ English learning. The author hopes the findings of this thesis can contribute tosimilar research, and that middle school teachers and students will pay more attention toEnglish reading.