An Action Research On Genre-based Teaching Approach In Senior High English Reading Instruction

Reading plays an important role in English learning.Traditional reading teaching attaches great importance to words and grammars in the textbook,while the reading effect is not optimistic.The genre-based teaching approach has been popular around the world since 1980 s.Based on the idea of genre and genre analysis knowledge that focus on understanding the genres of different texts,the researcher does an action research to apply genre-based teaching approach to reading teaching in senior high school.This paper consists of three research questions: 1.What are the effects of genre-based teaching approach on senior high school students' reading learning? 2.What are the problems of genre-based teaching approach during its application? 3.How can the problems be solved to make genre-based teaching more effective?The researcher carried out two rounds of action research in this study,and it lasted for four months.The subjects are the 45 students from Class 8,Grade 2 in No.10 Senior High School in Shenyang.Each round of action research includes four steps: identifying problems,making the action plan,implementing the action plan,as well as evaluation and reflection.Before the research began,the researcher did some survey to know something about the situation of current reading instruction and found some existing problems.Then the researcher tried to apply genre-based teaching approach to her class during her internship.Different features and models of different genres were demonstrated to the students,and some examples and teaching procedures were illustrated clearly.As for the second-round action research,the researcher adjusted the action plan according to the results and problems appeared in the first-round action research.She transferred the teaching procedure from deduction to induction,and added some cultural background information introduction before the reading began,what's more,the researcher gave the students' intensive reading exercises and changed the last teaching step from a similar passage analysis to imitation writing.SPSS(version 17.0)software was used to analyze the data of questionnaires and tests of this study.Moreover,the researcher did some interviews to the students in order to get their ideas and attitudes towards the genre-based teaching approach.The results of the study show that genre-based teaching approach does have positive effects on improving senior high students' reading learning,which can also be a useful tool for enhancing the students' genre awareness.Genre-based teaching approach has helped students to be more interested in English reading.Such an approach is effective in stimulating students' reading interest,which in turn may result in increasing students' reading confidence,forming good habits in reading and using various reading strategies initiatives.However,some defects still exist in the study because of the time constraints and some other reasons,for instance,the small sample and short time.As a consequence,the researchers and teachers should try their best to make more improvements in the future studies.