A Case Study Of Reading Teaching Strategies Employed By An Excellent Senior High School English Teacher

This study was undertaken to find out the reading teaching strategies employed by an excellent senior high school English teacher.The theoretical bases in this study are Input Hypothesis and Attribution Theory and the methodological base of this study is Grounded Theory.The significance of the study is to enrich the existing English reading teaching strategies,to provide senior high school English teachers with some reading strategies to choose from so as to improve their reading teaching,and to promote their professional developmentThree research questions are listed below:1.What reading teaching strategies does an excellent senior high school English teacher employ before class?2.What reading teaching strategies does an excellent senior high school English teacher employ in class?3.What reading teaching strategies does an excellent senior high school English teacher employ after class?The subject,who was selected by purposive sampling,was an excellent English teacher in a four-star senior high school.For the sake of convenience,he was labeled as F in this study.Having teaching for over 29 years,F is credited as Yangzhou special-class English teacher,head of English teachers in the Teaching and Research Station of Yangzhou,the discipline leader,youth backbone teacher,supervisor of Master of Education at Yangzhou University.What’s more,he once won the first prize and special prize in outstanding senior high school English teaching competitions and published some papers related to English teaching at provincial level and above,one of which was in core journal.Besides,F,who teaches the key class in this four-star school every year,was invited to give lectures or lessons in many provinces.In addition,F was the tutor of the researcher during her internship,which made it easier to observe his teachings.His outgoing and talkative character paved the way for the interview while his willingness to cooperation and kindness to assistance smoothed the way for the whole research process.The instruments of the study are interview schedule and participant observation.In order to be qualified for the interview,the researcher first familiarized herself with the specific procedures of the interview by reading relevant books and then carrying out a pilot study with the help of the researcher’s roommate as the interviewee,in order to anticipate problems that might come up.The formal interview was held in the subject’s office on the morning of Friday,September 30th,conducted in Chinese in a daily conversational style so that the subject could express his ideas freely.With the interviewee’s permission,the interview was recorded,transcribed and translated.Participant observation,which lasted for two months from September to October in 2018,was conducted in his classes,in order to complement and confirm the reading teaching strategies in class.Data analysis involved open coding,axial coding,selective coding and model construction.The major findings yielded from the study are summarized as follows:Firstly,the reading teaching strategies employed by an excellent senior high school English teacher was preparation strategy which is subdivided into mental-preparation strategy,physical-preparation strategy,and teaching-preparation strategy.Mental-preparation strategy is comprised of highlighting-the-role-of-reading strategy and maintaining-emotional-health strategy;physical-preparation strategy consists of keeping-fresh-with-a-loud-voice strategy;teaching-preparation strategy includes indirect-teaching-preparation strategy and direct-teaching-preparation strategy.Indirection-teaching-preparation strategy is further divided into full-preparation-for-students strategy,well-read strategy,and forming-correct-cultural-consciousness strategy;direct-teaching-preparation strategy consists of regarding-learning-guide-as-assistant-tool strategy and full-preparation-for-lesson-teaching strategy.Secondly,the reading teaching strategies employed by an excellent senior high school English teacher in class include teaching-with-textbook strategy and flexible-teaching-procedure strategy.The former is subdivided into four sub-categories including paraphrasing strategy,jumping-out-of-the-restriction-of-text strategy,choosing-proper-reading-teaching-method strategy,and connecting-reading-with-practice strategy;the latter is subdivided into setting-goals-for-each-student strategy,taking-full-advantage-of-lead-in strategy and avoiding-having-discussion-for-discussion’s-sake strategy.All the strategies summarized here provided opportunities for optimal input,which conforms to Krashen’s claims that input should be comprehensible,relevant and interesting.Thirdly,the reading teaching strategies employed by an excellent senior high school English teacher after class are self-development strategy and effective-assignment strategy.The former is subdivided into self-reflection strategy and self-evaluation strategy;the latter is subdivided into fewer-but-better-assignment strategy and assignment-evaluation strategy.This study has two limitations.Firstly,because all the case studies deal with the uniqueness,richness and alternatives,this case study is no exception,which could not be generalized to the other excellent English teachers.Besides,the case study is descriptive in nature,and the effectiveness of the reading teaching strategies was to be confirmed in the future studies.Secondly,the categorization of the strategies employed by an excellent English teacher was made by the researcher herself,which could not guarantee 100% objectivity.