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

Reading teaching is an essential part of English teaching in senior high schools.Pre-reading activities as the first step of reading lessons,exert a crucial impact on the quality of reading instruction.As is known,the productive pre-reading activities not only can improve students’ interest in English reading and activate the classroom atmosphere,but also can activate students’ fundamental background knowledge and supplement their existing knowledge,thus promoting students’ mastery of the content of the text.Furthermore,pre-reading activities act as the guidance and training to students’reading strategies.Based on the schema theory and affective filter hypothesis,this study adopts classroom observation,questionnaire,and interview to investigate the current situation of pre-reading activities.After defining the core concepts and combing the related literature at home and abroad,this study attempts to answer the following three questions:(1)What is the status quo of pre-reading activities used in senior high school English reading classes?(2)What types of pre-reading activities are preferred by students?What are the pre-reading strategies commonly used by students?(3)What are the problems existing in pre-reading activities?The relevant research tools were revised.This research surveyed 110 students of a senior high school in Beijing,and the data collected was analyzed by SPSS 20.0.According to the results of the study,the author has found:(1)In the current senior high school English reading classes,most teachers carry out pre-reading activities in various forms,most of which are related to linguistic schemata,followed by content schemata.The use of formal schema is much less.The most common pre-reading activity carried out by teachers is pre-questioning.Students can actively participate in pre-reading activities organized by teachers.Both teachers and students think it is necessary to carry out pre-reading activities,which is conducive to improve students’reading ability and activate the classroom atmosphere.(2)Providing background knowledge related to the topic by teachers is the pre-reading activity students prefer most.Guessing the content of the passage by looking at the charts and pictures existing in the passage is the most common pre-reading strategy used by students.(3)The current pre-reading activities in senior high schools mainly have the following problems:From the aspect of teachers,pre-reading activities take up too much class time;Pre-questioning is the pre-reading activity most commonly used by teachers,while a single form of pre-questioning is difficult to arouse students’ interest in reading;Some teachers do not pay attention to guiding students to adopt specific pre-reading strategies before reading.From the aspect of students,in the actual reading process,students lack the awareness of using a pre-reading strategy.On the basis of previous studies,this study investigates the current situation of pre-reading activities in English reading classes of senior high schools,summarizes beneficial educational experience,attempts to find some problems,and provides some suggestions,hoping that the function of pre-reading activities can be brought into full play and the effect of reading teaching can be improved better.