A Research On English Reading Teaching In Senior High School Based On Text Interpretation

English reading teaching plays a very crucial role in classroom teaching and text interpretation is the basis on which the English reading teaching is implemented.It can be said that deep text interpretation is the guarantee of effective teaching.The National English Curriculum Standard issued by the Chinese Ministry of Education puts forward the overall goal of the English curriculum.The overall goal is to develop students' comprehensive language ability which consists of language knowledge,language skills,emotional attitude,learning strategies and cultural awareness(Bartlett,1932).Therefore,English teachers should interpret texts from multiple perspectives.They should not only pay attention to explanation of language knowledge,but also focus on developing students' cultural awareness,emotional attitude and reading strategies.Accurate and effective interpretation does not only contribute to improving students' comprehensive language ability,but also to promoting the professional development of teachers.Therefore,through investigating the present situation of English teachers' reading instructional implementation,we can understand whether teachers interpret text comprehensively and deeply and whether they can achieve the expected teaching effect or not.The subjects of this investigation were 72 English teachers from senior high schools,which involved two key senior high schools(Datong No.1 Senior High School,Huairen No.1Senior High School)and three ordinary senior high schools(Datong No.2 Senior High School,Datong No.4 Senior High School and Huairen No.9 Senior high school).By the questionnaire,the author learned about the teachers' understanding of text interpretation.Then,through analyzing collected cases of instructional design and the data of classroom observation,the author understood the present implementation of text interpretation in the instuctional design and reading teaching in senior high school.Finally,in order to find reasons why teachers adjust their instructional activities in the teaching implementation,the author interviewed teachers after observing classroom,so as to put forward some useful suggestions for reading teaching.This research focuses on the following questions:(1)How do English teachers understand reading teaching in senior high school?(2)What is the current situation of English teachers' reading instructional design in senior high school?(3)What is the current situation of English teachers' reading instructional implementation in senior high school?Based on the analysis and discussions,the author came to conclusions as follows:(1)At present,English teachers in senior high school can fully understand the importance of reading teaching.Most teachers not only focus on the vocabulary and grammar,but also pay attention to developing the students' reading ability and interest.At the same time,some teachers also believe that the purpose of reading teaching is to cultivate students' ability of independent thinking,comprehensive analysis and creative thinking.(2)By collecting and analyzing the instructional design cases,it can be clearly seen that the design contents are comprehensive,and English teachers can consider the relevant factors of instructional design.For example,texts' structure,information,reading strategies,affect and culture.However,most teachers are not able to deeply interpret content of text.They pay more attention to language knowledge than reading ability,affect,culture,and so on.(3)Through the classroom observation,we can see that the current situation of English teachers' reading instructional implementation is not ideal.First,the mode of English reading teaching lacks flexibility and creativity.As most teachers teach reading class according to the reference or PPT provided by school network,the teaching process can be divided into the same four steps: warming up& lead-in,skimming,detailed reading and post reading.Second,teachers attach more importance to language knowledge than reading ability.The majority of teachers tend to spend much time in explaining key words and grammar while giving fewer opportunities to train students' reading ability.Third,teachers can't deeply interpret text information.Many teachers just interpret the literal information while ignoring the inferential and applied information.Fourth,teachers are weak in interpreting affect and cultures.Due to the tight schedule and too many teaching tasks,most teachers are not willing to interpret cultural background and emotion within limited time.By the interview,the author found the reasons for which teachers can not fully teach English reading based on the perspective of text interpretation.First of all,teachers are lack of awareness of the interpretation of the text;second,because the schools' assessment criteria are score-oriented,which makes teachers spend most of time on the vocabulary,grammar and other language knowledge;third,it is very tiring and time-consuming to prepare lesson from the perspectives of text interpretation;finally,because some teachers are inexperienced and limited in their teaching ability,they can not fully understand and interpret passages.