An Action Research On The Construction Of A FLOW Against Reticence In Middle School English Reading Classrooms With Game-based Approach

Student's reticence is always blocking the way to the teaching of English reading comprehension.Repeated efforts have been made to analyze and classify the causes of classroom reticence.However,there has not yet been a feasible scheme for the elimination of reticence,due to the widely-accepted fact that it is complex,ambiguous,and is related to different disciplines.Reticence in English reading classrooms,apart from the necessary reticence in reading and thinking,is mainly the passive reticence defined as a sign of rejection,or the fear of social evaluation,or a feeling of invisibility,or an expression of social disinterest,or an intense intellectual engagement.This is the reticence that the teacher does not expect.It is this kind of reticence that makes the teaching of English reading difficult.The present action research focuses on a feasible operation against the passive reticence in the classroom.Based on Piaget's Constructivist Theory of Learning and Csikszentmihalyi's Theory of FLOW,the author,aiming at the elimination of passive reticence,carried out a 12-week action research in a junior two English reading class with Game-based Approach,defined in this paper as a purposeful,planned,and targeted English teaching in the form of games,enabling the teaching process of reading to be meaningful to the psychological needs of the student.During the process the games and what supposed to be learned become constituents of the characteristics of the student's activities,and of the characteristics of the student's life,so as to enable the student to develop into an independent,autonomous expression of the self,with a senses of happiness,freedom,satisfaction,and a balance between the internal and external world.The research attempts to answer two research questions: 1.What impacts can Game-based Approach have on the passive reticence in English reading classrooms? 2.How can the effects of Game-based Approach be promoted and prolonged? These two research questions are answered with the comparisons,analyses,and discussions on the results of the pre-,mid-,and post-classroom observations and the pre-and post-questionnaires,and supported by the comparison between the pretest and the posttest.They reveal that classroom games closely related to the reading materials can enable the student to concentrate on the games,via which the content of the reading material is repeatedly used and thereby reinforced.Familiarity with the information required for winning the games further motivates and enables the student tounderstand deeper and remember longer the content and,at the same time,eliminates the mental distress and the reticence in English reading classroom.The student's teamwork spirit is developed with group dynamics.The social function of the target language is also promoted in use.The motivation to participate and the positive effects of Game-based Approach on the student's reading performance are prolonged in this FLOW against RETICENCE.It can be concluded that,with Piaget's Constructivist Theory of Learning and Csikszentmihalyi's Theory of FLOW,the Game-based Approach can activate the students' intrinsic motivation of needs,after which knowledge can be acquired from the necessary learning materials in certain social and cultural backgrounds through a nine-component-state FLOW of meaning construction,and the enjoyment of reading with curiosity,persistence,and humility.Therefore,it is highly suggested that English teachers establish a rich interactive learning environment for the student to learn and consolidate the classroom knowledge thus presented through repeated practice in a quasi-society of cooperation.And it is Game-based Approach that functions,promotes,and prolongs the FLOW against passive reticence in English reading classrooms.