A Study Of English Reading Instructional Activity Design In Junior High School From The Perspective Of Activity-based Learning

The English core competences that are put forward from English Curriculum Standards for the Senior High Schools(2017)have become the goal of English teaching in the new era.In order to achieve the goal of cultivating students' core competences,activity-based learning are proposed by Chinese experts and they clarified that activity is the main means for learners to try to use language to comprehend and express meaning,to construct cultural awareness,to develop thinking quality and to form learning ability.Nowadays,the influence of English core competences and activity-based learning has entered the field of English teaching of junior high and more and more teachers start to teach under the guidance of it.In addition,reading teaching is of much importance to foster students' core competences.Therefore,it is particularly necessary to study the design of English reading instructional activity in junior high school from the perspective of activity-based learning.There are three research questions in this study:(1)What are the teachers' understanding and attitude of activity-based English learning?(2)How is the consistency between reading instructional activities designed and implemented by teachers and the requirements of activity-based learning?(3)What difficulties are there in the design of instructional activities in reading teaching under the guidance of activity-based learning? One hundred and eleven teachers from Shandong province are surveyed through questionnaire and three teachers from a junior high school in Yantai are selected as the participants of classroom observation,and five teachers are interviewed in order to find the answers to the three research questions and also,to give some suggestions based on the problems and difficulties existed.The results show that although teachers have a positive attitude to activity-based learning,most of them do not have a deep understanding of activity-based learning.They do not know much about the connotation of activity-based learning or its three types of activities,that is,activities of learning and understanding,applying andanalyzing,evaluating and creating.When designing the instructional activities,most teachers believe that their activity design basically meet the requirements of activity-based learning,especially learning and understanding activity meets the most.However,when implementing,the consistency between applying and analyzing activity and evaluating and creating activity implemented by teachers and the requirements of activity-based learning needs to be improved.Based on the problems in the design and implementation of activity-based learning,teachers expressed there exist some difficulties in the design of these three types of activities,such as the monotonousness form of activity design,superficial text interpretation,the way to design evaluating and creating activity,etc.and they expressed the help and support they need.According to the conclusions above,some suggestions are also made on teachers,schools and experts.Besides,through this study,the author hopes to provide some feedback to education experts,meanwhile,it can also prompt junior high school English teachers reflect on their own teaching.Last but not least,through the process of doing this research,the author herself has deepened the cognition of activity-based learning,which is of much benefit to her future teaching career.