An Empirical Study Of The Relationship Between Senior-high School English Teachers’ Beliefs And Pre-reading Activities In Reading Instruction

More and more English teachers have realized that reading instruction plays an important port in English learning, and they have done a lot of research on the ways and models of reading instruction, but the results are still unsatisfactory, and students still have many difficulties in reading. One of the main difficulties is the lack of background knowledge. With the development of cognitive psychology and schema theory, people are gradually aware of the importance of background knowledge in reading comprehension. Pre-reading activity therefore becomes one important stage in reading instruction. But in senior high English classes, pre-reading activity does not draw much of teachers’ attention. Pre-reading activity sometimes even exists as a decorative part.The teachers may have their own beliefs on the pre-reading activities, but these beliefs are usually implicit, and the teachers rarely recognize these beliefs and make them an important part of their teaching reflection. Many studies at home and abroad on the pre-reading activities have been done, but they focus mainly on the effects of pre-reading activity on students’ reading abilities, and few studies involve a systematical investigation of teachers’ beliefs of the pre-reading activities, the current situation of carrying out the pre-reading activities in the reading instruction as well as the relationship between the teachers’ beliefs and their teaching practice.This paper studies the relationship between the senior high school English teachers’ beliefs and the pre-reading activities in reading instruction. The data are obtained through questionnaires, classroom observations and interviews. The subjects are thirty English teachers from Malipo Minzu Middle School, among whom three English teachers are selected for classroom observations and interviews. The qualitative research method involved in this study is semi-structured interview and classroom observation, following classroom observations first and interviews next format. The quantitative data of this study come from a questionnaire, which is based on the Teachers’ Beliefs Questionnaires adapted by the previous researchers. Some modifications are made according to the specific research purpose of this study. The questionnaire is divided into two parts. The first part is the survey of senior-high school teachers’ beliefs of the pre-reading activities, which includes the teachers’ beliefs of the necessity of the pre-reading activities, the teachers’ beliefs of the purpose of the pre-reading activities, the teachers’ beliefs of the effectiveness of the pre-reading activities, the self-assessment and reflection of the effectiveness of the pre-reading activities and the teachers’ beliefs of the current teaching situation of carrying out the pre-reading activities. The second part is the investigation of the teaching situation of the pre-reading activities in senior high school. The data is analysed by using SPSS 10.0.The main findings of this study on the relationship between the teachers’ beliefs and the pre-reading activities are shown as follows: Firstly, Teachers’ beliefs of the importance and necessity of the pre-reading activities are correct, but they have misunderstanding on the fundamental purpose of the pre-reading activities. Secondly, Teachers’ beliefs are not consistent with teachers’ behaviours in their real class instruction behaviors. Thirdly, English teachers are lack of deep and sufficient reflection on the teaching behaviours of the pre-reading activities. Finally, the research shows some limitations of this study and gives some suggestions for further studies.