An Empirical Study Of Ecological Classroom-Based English Reading Instruction In Senior High School

Ecological classroom is a new educational pursuit which regards student,teacher,learning environment,learning material,learning activity and learning assessment as a holistic ecological teaching system and aims to establish a covariant,integrated,open and sustainable teaching model.English reading is a fundamental acceptive skill that helps senior high school English learners obtain information or language knowledge from written language and cultivate in them affections or critical thinking ability.The present empirical study attempts to find out whether students' reading competence will be effectively enhanced within the framework of ecological classroom.The present study employs the ecological English reading classroom model proposed by the author referring to Kang's(2012)instructional design(ID)framework for foreign language teaching(FLT)from the perspective of the ecological education as well as Liu's(2013)structure of co-constructional ecological classroom.The subjects are from a key high school in Nanjing.48 Senior Three students from Class 9 form the Experimental Class and 45 from Class 7 as the Control Class who participated in a three-month experiment.The study aims to answer three research questions:1)What effects does the ecological English reading classroom model have on students' reading competence in senior high school?2)Which kind/kinds of reading competence will be affected by the application of ecological English reading classroom model?3)How to optimize the ecological English reading classroom model?To answer these questions,instruments such as pre-test and post-test,questionnaire,classroom observation and interview are employed.In terms of data analysis and discussion,firstly,data collected from questionnaire and classroom observation form is processed by qualitative analysis.Moreover,after the experiment,SPSS 20.0 is used to operate correlation analysis of the reading scores of the two tests and between the two classes.Finally,the results of specific reading competences of the Experimental Class in pre-test and post-test are processed by quantitative analysis.Qualitative analysis is applied to analyze the results of interview.The results of the experiment indicate that:1)The construction and application of the ecological English reading class model plays an effective and positive part in improving students' reading competence.2)Students' reading competence of inferring based on the context and understanding text-structure and discourse organization in the Experimental Class is significantly affected by the application of ecological English reading classroom model.3)The ecological English reading classroom model could be optimized through the following approaches:building a tighter teacher-student bond after class not only in class;creating changeable ecological classroom environment regarding seating arrangement,classroom decoration as well as teaching language;utilizing adapted native and multimedia teaching materials catering for students with different language proficiency;implementing critical thinking reading activities including debates,problem-solving researches and case studies,etc.relevant to the reading topic;providing feedback on developmental reading assessment exposing strengths and weaknesses in reading and help improve them accordingly.