A Study On The Application Of DRTA Strategy In English Reading Instruction In Junior High School

Reading is important to learn English for visual learners and to improve their English reading ability is one of the important goals for teachers in middle school English teaching.However,the traditional reading instruction is mainly examination-oriented,which emphasizes on the improvement of students' examination-related ability,thus neglecting the cultivation of students' basic English reading skills.Therefore,the author of this paper will introduce DRTA strategy into junior high school English reading instruction,trying to break the limitations of traditional teaching methods,and strive to find an effective way to improve students' basic reading ability.The foundation of DRTA strategy is based on the schema theory,the humanism theory.Equipped with the question method,the strategy includes three steps: predicting,reading and proving.DRTA strategy means students make prediction according to the teacher's guidance questions and then they read the specified part of the text to prove or disprove their former predictions.The author used DRTA strategy in reading instruction with intention both to improve students' learning interests and cultivate their critical thinking.As a result,the students are supposed to make progress on reading ability.Hence,the author intends to explore the following research questions:1.Can the teacher improve student's reading ability by using DRTA strategy in English reading instruction?2.Will the application of DRTA strategy effects students' interest on English learning?3.What's students' attitude to DRTA strategy?The research takes students of Dalian Wan Junior High School as the experiment subject.The experiment lasted for a whole semester,and 86 grade eight students from two normal classes will participate in this experiment.Among them,43 students as the experiment group,and 4 students as the control group.Before the experiment,both of them accept the pre-test of the same level,and after the experiment,both of the classes accept the post-test.The students from experimental group accept questionnaires before and after the experiment,furthermore,they accept the interview after the experiment.The author uses SPSS 17.0 to analyze the collected data after the experiment.The pre-test data shows that before using DRTA strategy there is no significant difference in students' reading ability of both classes.And the post-test data shows that the students from experimental group make more progress in reading ability than those from control group.The results of the questionnaire showed that the students in the experimental class improved their interest in English learning after the DRTA strategy instruction.Theinterview results show that the students from experimental class generally believe that the DRTA strategy can better stimulate their reading interest and improve their reading ability.This study hopes it can provide some references to the English reading instruction in junior high schools in theory.