The Application Of Content-based Instruction To The Teaching Of Senior-high School English Reading

Since the 1980 s,Content-Based Instruction(CBI)has been found to be an effective approach to teaching English as a foreign or second language in America.Because of CBI,learners can develop their language skills as well as gain access to new concepts through content.And in recent years,CBI has been widely used in various teaching scenes all over the world in many kinds of models.Numerous empirical studies exist to demonstrate the efficiency of CBI in developing the learners' language proficiency in college English,especially in business,medicine,tourism and other professional area.However,applying CBI to middle and primary schools is much less.Thus the author hold that it is better to stimulate students studying motivation,improve the students' ability of English reading,which connects CBI with students' English reading in senior high school,and it can cater to the new curriculum reform during the 21 st century.This thesis is intended to explore the efficacy of Content-Based Instruction(CBI)in influencing learner's reading ability of English in the senior school context.And it is based on Cooperative Learning Theory,Constructivism,and the Theory of Cognitive and Educational Psychology.The experiment was carried out in Anqing Senior High School,and the subjects were 110 students from 2 classes in Grade 1.The subjects are at the similar age,and they have the similar educational backgrounds.The experimental class used the principles of CBI in the reading teaching,while the control class employed the former way of teaching.The experimental teaching program lasted for four months,starting from October,2016 and ending in January,2017.The questionnaire was conducted before the experiment,for the purpose of finding out students' interest and helpful topics in the experimental class,and the interviews were designed to find whether the students were interested in the principles of CBI,and the effect on the students' reading ability.And then,the data of pretest and post-test were analysis by SPSS to determine whether the students' reading ability was improved through the principles of CBI.Multivariate statistical analysis was conducted to deal with the data and the materials which were collected by the author.It is found that: Under the learning environment in which English is learned as a foreign language,the principles of CBI are not only applied to the senior English reading course effectively,but also can improve the students' reading ability.For the future,teachers should assess students' reading ability and then select some reading materials according to students' reading ability so as to raise students' interest and cultivate students' ability of English reading.