Investigations On Lead-in Strategies In Junior High School English Reading Teaching

Reading plays a vital role in language learning.The period of junior high school is a golden age for students to learn something new.Effective junior high school English reading teaching can not only help students master language knowledge well,but also lay a good foundation for students' English learning and application.In junior high school English reading class,teachers should not only help students acquire English language knowledge in reading materials,but also pay attention to develop their reading ability and cross-cultural communication awareness continuously.Relevant researches show that in the junior high school English reading lessons,facing the enormous pressure of teaching and examinations,the teachers think highly of pumping knowledge into students' mind and training their skills.Students are lack of interest or not highly engaged in the reading lessons.Their potential has not been fully utilized.Therefore,the author has a strong interest in how to fully mobilize the enthusiasm of students,let them participate in the English reading class actively and play the main role of the class.As the first part of the lesson,lead-in plays an important role in stimulating students' interest in learning and attracting their attention.Many domestic and foreign scholars have done a lot of research on the strategies and functions of lead-in,but not enough has been done on the selection of lead-in strategies and the specific application in teaching practice.Based on Schema Theory,Affective Filter Hypothesis and Advanced Organizer Strategy,the author proposes the following three research questions: 1.What kinds of lead-in strategies are employed by teachers in the junior high school English reading lessons? 2.What are the teachers and students attitude towards the lead-in strategy? 3.What are the factors that influence the adoption of lead-in strategy by teachers? As a trainee in the Zhengzhou 47 Middle School,the author adopted classroom observation method,questionnaire survey method and interview method to investigate 8 English teachers and 200 students,then collated and analyzed the collected data.The main conclusions of this survey are as follows.First,lead-in is an indispensable part of junior high English reading lessons.The lead-in strategy adopted in English reading lessons are the free talk lead-in method,brainstorming lead-in method,revision lead-in method and so on.Appropriate lead-in methods can improve students' interest in learning.Second,most teachers and students can realize the importance of lead-in,the free talk strategy is relatively popular in the English reading class.Third,teachers took different factors into considerations when they design the lead-in activities,such as student cognition level,text materials,and class type.The author hopes this study can help teachers realize the inadequacies of the lead-in in the English reading lessons and improve them actively.It is also hoped that this survey can provide some suggestions for teachers to adopt flexible and diversified lead-in methods to stimulate students' interest in participating classroom activities.