A Study Of Pre-reading Activities In Senior High School English Reading Classes

Reading,as one of the four skills(the other three are: Listening Speaking and Writing),plays an important part in English teaching and learning.It holds a crucial position in learning English.Reading is an important part in learning any language.Through widely reading,students are able to know the vocabulary meaning in certain context,and expand their vocabulary,acknowledge formal structure and sentence patterns,know about foreigner background culture.Reading can not only improve students thinking ability,but also improve their writing skill.Pre-reading activity as the first step of reading lessons,holds a crucial role in reading teaching.Designing a pre-reading activity directly influences the whole reading teaching process.Efficient pre-reading activities build up or activate students' background knowledge,stimulate students' interests,improve students' reading comprehension as well as make classroom atmosphere more relaxing and active.It makes teaching activity done well and improve the effect of English teaching.This study was conducted during three months' practicum through classroom observation,questionnaire survey and interview to know the conventional types of pre-reading activity.The writer selects 16 English teachers and 116 students as subject,who are from Grade 2 in the Senior High School attached to Shandong Normal University.This study tries to answer the following questions:(1)What are the types of pre-readingactivities commonly used in high school English reading class?(2)What pre-reading activities are students favorite? What are the reasons?(3)What are the students' comments on pre-reading activities?Through this research,the author finds:(1)The most commonly used pre-reading activities in high school English reading class are multimedia introduction,questioning and discussing,and providing background knowledge.(2)Multimedia introduction type such as a video song or a small animation is the most recognized pre-reading activity.(3)Students think the lively and interesting video can help them quickly understand the topic-related content and deepen their understanding of the content of the text.However,there are some hidden issues in video introduction.On the one hand,some of students have leisure and recreation attitudes to see the lively and funny video,easily to ignore some language points involved in the video.On the other hand,after watching the video,if the teacher does not examine the text carefully or the students are not interested in the text,it will turns the classroom atmosphere from harmonious to a dull atmosphere.Lastly,aiming at the current situation of pre-reading activities in senior high school English reading,the author puts forward suggestions for improvement,including emphasizing the design and implementation of pre-reading activities,designing and carrying out pre-reading activities with student-centered,and emphasizing students' subjectivity.The purpose is to generalize the teaching experiences and teaching methods of High school teachers.The author summarize the teaching experience and methods of first-line teachers,and hope to provide reference for novice teachers.Meanwhile,this study tries to find some pre-reading weaknesses in current reading teaching,discuss with the tutor of the areas for improvement so as to make pre-reading activity play a greater role to contribute to reading teaching,improve students' reading ability and bring up students interests in English learning.