A Research Of The Expertise Reversal Effect In English Reading Comprehension On The Senior High School Students

The reading comprehension is an important part in teaching and learning of the senior high school English,and it occupies 40 scores and heads the list in the National Matriculation English Test(NMET).According to Anderson & Freebody's(1981)views,there is a significant positive correlation between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension.In the reading comprehension,it is a common method adopted by the teachers to help the students understand the reading contents by adding vocabulary explanations.For the low level students,these measures can reduce the learning difficulties and maintain students' attention to improve their performance.However,the high level students do not get better performance and sometimes even get worse performance.Kalyuga et al.(2013)pointed out that the instructional techniques that are highly effective with the low level students could lose their effectiveness and even had negative consequences when used with the high level students.This phenomenon is called the expertise reversal effect.As an objective law,the expertise reversal effect does exist in the teaching process of many subjects.The researches on the expertise reversal effect at abroad have been in depth.Kalyuga et al.(2013)explained the mechanism of the expertise reversal effect from the perspective of the cognitive load theory and the redundancy principle.Schnotz(2010),Rey(2011)and Buchwald(2011)explained the mechanism of the expertise reversal effect from the perspective of the motivation theory.The researches on the expertise reversal effect at home are still at the initial stage and have not been studied systematically.Many young teachers who have just entered teaching career can only gradually understand the law through the accumulation of experiences,which will bring harm to the actual teaching.The aim of the thesis is to explore and explain the cause of the expertise reversal effect in the English reading comprehension of the senior high school by the method of the empirical research.The author hopes this research could provide some references for the future researchers and the practical teaching.In this research,400 students from the No.3 Middle School of the Yining city in Xinjiang were selected from the six parallel classes to have the pre-test.The pre-test paper was the reading comprehension part of the 2016 NMET in Xinjiang.According to the scores of the reading,different level groups were divided after the pretest.The top 30% students including 120 students were arranged as the high level students group,and the bottom 30% students including 120 students were arranged as the low level students group.Both the high level students and the low level students were divided into three groups averagely.One high level group and one low level group were selected randomly to form an experiment group,and there were three experiment groups in all.Each experiment group contained 40 high level students and 40 low level students.After that,the post-test was carried out in these three groups.The post-test paper was the reading comprehension part of the 2015 NMET which were noted with Chinese in different degrees.There were three kinds of vocabulary explanations,no-redundancy vocabulary explanations,low-redundancy vocabulary explanations and high-redundancy vocabulary explanations.Each experiment group matched a kind of post-test paper randomly.After the post-test,all the 240 students were investigated with the cognitive load questionnaire to measure the level of the cognitive load of the students in the post-test process.Finally all the data of test and questionnaire were analyzed with SPSS 18.0.The results of this study showed that the high-redundancy vocabulary explanation methods were effective for the low level students,but it had a negative effect on the high level students at the first.Then the expertise reversal effect occurred in the high-redundancy explanation situation.At last,according to the perspective of the cognitive load theory,the main reason was that for the low level students,the high-redundancy explanation increased the germane cognitive load,reduced the learning difficulties and improved the learning effect.But for the high level students,this method increased the extraneous cognitive load and reduced the learning effect.Based on this opinion,in the practical teaching,the teachers should find out the balance point in the process of supporting the germane cognitive load and reducing the extraneous cognitive load.According to the perspective of the zone of proximal development(ZPD),the high-redundancy explanation reduced the difficulties and was suitable for the practical knowledge level of the low level students.So it could provide effective scaffolding in the zone of proximal development of the low level students.However,for the high level students,the high-redundancy explanation couldn't provide useful scaffolding because it was not suitable for their practical level.Based on this opinion,on the one hand,the teachers should consider the differences between the high level students' ZPD and the low level students' ZPD;on the other hand,more reasonable class grouping and mobile learning system could provide some better options for teaching and learning.