The Study On Junior High School English Teachers’ Teaching Beliefs And Practices In Reading Instruction

Reading instruction has always been regarded as a key and difficult area of English teaching in junior high school.Over the past few decades,the study of reading instruction from the teacher’s perspective is mainly focused on exploring the teacher’s outward teaching behaviors while the teacher’s own reading teaching beliefs have almost been ignored.Hence,this study aims at investigating junior high school English teachers’ teaching beliefs and practices about reading instruction in the context of New Curriculum Reform.In this study,three research questions are proposed as follows:1)What teaching beliefs do junior high school English teacher hold towards reading instruction? What is the status of their reading instruction practices?2)What is the relationship between junior high school English teachers’ teaching beliefs and practices in reading instruction? Is it consistent or not?3)What are the underlying factors affecting the relationship between English teachers’ teaching beliefs and practices in reading instruction?In order to answer these three research questions,fifty junior high school English teachers from 5 schools in Xi’an are selected for this study.First,the questionnaires are distributed to these 50 English teachers for the purpose of getting a general understanding of their reading teaching beliefs and practices,and then three teachers among them are chosen to conduct interviews and classroom observations to further detect the relationship between their reading teaching beliefs and practices and analyze the underlying reasons for this relationship.Findings of this study indicate that junior high school English teachers hold positive teaching beliefs about reading instruction.They emphasize linguistic knowledge teaching in reading instruction and realize the importance of reading strategies;they argue that purpose of reading instruction should be diversified;they maintain that teachers should regard the passages in textbooks as main teaching content.And the status of junior high school English teachers’ teaching practices about reading instruction are characterized as follows: In English reading class,they frequently explain vocabulary and grammar knowledge,emphasize the development of students’ skimming and scanning strategies as well as focus on improving students’ writing ability,test-taking ability and thinking ability through reading instruction.Besides,they usually regard the reading materials in the textbook as the main teaching content and hardly require students to read extracurricular English books after school.In addition,it is also founded that junior high school English teachers’ teaching beliefs are largely consistent with teaching practices about reading instruction.However,there also exists some discrepancy between the two and the main factors causing the discrepancy can be categorized into teacher’s personal factors,factors from students and teaching environmental factors.The findings of this study provide some implications for junior high school English teachers and school department.For teachers themselves,they should fully understand their own reading teaching beliefs and teaching practices.At the same time,it is imperative for them to reflect on their teaching constantly.As far as schools and other educational departments are concerned,teacher training should be strengthened especially for new teachers.