A Study On The Effects Of Lead-in Strategies On Students' Engagement In Senior High School English Reading

Lead-in,happening before teachers carry out the new teaching content or the new teaching activities,is a teaching step which with specific strategies can firstly attract students' attention,trigger their curiosity about the following class,and eventually guide them into the learning state.Although it lasts no more than three to six minutes,it is the bridge to connect old and new knowledge,also the switch to stimulate students' reading interests,even the pivot to affect students' engagement.Lots of researches and studies about lead-in have been done at home and abroad,ranging from its functions,methods,intentions to its meanings,principles,etc,mentioning the present situation of lead-in and its affected factors as well.However,most of them adopt qualitative research methods to conduct overall researches on lead-in teaching,one in a thousand focuses on students'expectations for lead-in strategies and the effects of different lead-in methods,lead-in time,lead-in feedback,etc.on students' engagement,meanwhile,in previous researches,there is a lack of actual practice and application in certain learning stages,subjects,or types of classes.Therefore,this study,unlike previous ones,combines lead-in strategies with students'engagement to explore the effects of the former on the latter in high school English reading classes,in which the research questions lie.In this research,the participants were all English teachers and their students from grade eleven in a Guiyang Senior High School to understand both teachers' and students'perspectives.With the purpose to find out the effects of lead-in strategies on students'engagement,their English reading classes were observed from both quantitative research and qualitative methods,including classroom observations,questionnaires and interviews.Lead-in strategies were studied in the following aspects:teachers' perceptions of lead-in,their methods,time and feedback,while students' engagement under different strategies was studied from their behavior,emotion and cognition.The research presented that there were some differences between these teachers' and students' views on lead-in strategies,resulting in following shortcomings,they were,the lead-in perceptions held by teachers were lopsided,the lead-in methods adopted by teachers were not student-centered,the lead-in time controlled by teachers was transitory or lengthy,the lead-in feedback given by teachers was simplistic and vapid.These deficiencies of lead-in strategies in English reading classes led to the failure in fully arousing students' reading interests to prepare for the following reading passages also the failure in successfully awakening students'engagement motivation to improve the efficiency of reading classes.Suggestions were put forward on how to adjust lead-in strategies in high school English reading classes to enhance students' engagement from both teachers' and school's angle.