A Survey Into The Role Of The Teacher-as-Mediator In English Reading Teaching In Senior High School

Reading is the main approach to improve students’ comprehensive ability to use language. English reading teaching classrooms are perfect platforms to activate the teachers and students as well as to release their potentials and exercise their wisdom. The cognition of students’ reading cannot do without the mediation role of teachers. Teachers, as the main guide of the teaching activities, play a significant role in the construction of students’ views on knowledge, abilities and right philosophy and value of life. More and more scholars have paid close attention to the Mediation Theory because it can help teachers to identify the fundamental task beneath the complicated surface. However, most of the studies are limited to the teachers and students in universities or vocational colleges. Few are about the ones in middle schools. So this paper is to investigate the role of teacher-as-mediator in English reading teaching at senior high schools. The main objectives of the survey are to figure out how much teachers at senior high schools understand the role of teacher-as-mediator, how they put this into practice in real classrooms and students’ opinion on the role of teacher-as-mediator.Questionnaires and interview survey are mainly used in this research. The subjects are 165 students and 12 teachers of grade 1 from the Attached Senior School of Shandong Normal University. SPSS 20.0 is mainly used to analysis the research data. The analysis result shows that most teachers have realized the importance of the role of teacher-as-mediator and put the theory into practice in real English teaching at senior high schools. The teachers’ views and practices are in accordance with each other on "shared intention" "control of own behavior" and "a belief in positive outcomes", which has been well accepted by and gained much support from the students for fulfilling their learning desires and expectations. Teachers have played a good role as a mediator in the three aspects. Although teachers lack in the practice in "beyond present purpose" "individuality" as well as "a sense of belonging", integrally teachers’ views and practices are mostly the same. In students’ opinion, the role of teacher-as-mediator is very important except "the sense of belonging". And they expect the teachers can really play the role. The interview of the teachers and students shows that there is a high degree of consistent between the result of the questionnaire and the students’ feelings. And also it makes the writer understand the teachers’real teaching situations and problems, which offers helps in rinding the reasons why there is a gap between the teachers’ views and the teachers’ practices.According to the results of questionnaires and interview, the author makes the following suggestions in terms of how to play a good role as a mediator effectively: First, teachers should further motivate the students by reminding the importance of tasks and further-up post-activities. Secondly, teachers should help students in building up their confidence and give them timely feedback to cultivate "a sense of competence". Thirdly, teachers need to create challenges in reading to develop students’"individuality". Fourthly, teachers need to make students study in teams to stress on the importance of "sharing". The last point is that teachers should cultivate students’"sense of belonging" in order to prompt the social development.