An Action Research On EFL Reading Teaching At A Rural Junior High School

"Many students think that reading is more important in the four language skills,especially in English reading".Teaching English reading is currently the focus of much concern.But in the teaching practice,teachers often complain that students are unable to read effectively and correctly in foreign language,and usually neither the teacher nor the students has a clear idea of what actually goes wrong,and so they are unable to decide on the proper remedies.Therefore,this study attempts to examine the problem and solves it based on action research approach.Teaching action research is a kind of research methods of teaching theories which has been developed in recent years.It is a form of advocating researches in the teaching;it is a form of self-reflective enquiry;its result is "to improve reality".The definition of teaching action research includes the following main aspects:action research is a systematic self-reflective exploration;action research is completed through a series of steps;teachers are directly involved in surveying and studying their own teaching problems;the aims of action research are to adjust the teaching practice to maximize effectiveness and improve their understanding of these practices,as well as the situations where the practices are carried outThe primary focus of the present study is on the implementation and development of an action research approach to teach English reading abilities as a foreign language in Lichuan Junior High School.There were six parts in the thesis.The first part was the purpose and significance of the research;the second part was about literature review;the third part stated mainly the theory of reading models;the fourth part was the research methodology.In the process of improving the students' reading abilities,based on reading theories,the preliminary questionnaire survey shows that students' reading ability are generally low,mainly due to the following reasons:little vocabulary;the students have no ability to apply correct skills to reading and lack of reading comprehension practice.Then,the author designed a detailed twenty-week action plan to solve these problems.In the process of acting research,some theories of reading ' the critical reading strategies and skills were introduced to the students,and some reading activities were carried out to enlarge the students' vocabulary and to form their reading habits,and increase their extracurricular reading amount as well.At the end of the study,SPSS software was used to analyze the results.The fifth part was data analysis and discussion.The sixth part was the conclusion.After the twenty week action research,the students made greater progress in reading than before.Besides,the author reflected on study effects of the students and teachers' self-perfection.Through this study,it is demonstrated that action research approach can better combine theories with practice and fill up the gap between teaching and researching.It has benefits on teaching and helping the learners to improve their reading skills successfully,as well as teachers' self-development.