A Probe of Improving High School Students’ Reading Ability

1、对提高高中学生阅读能力的探究a probe of improving high schoolstudents reading ability contentsabstract.1key words.1i. introduction.2ii. literature review.2iii. the present situation and problems of elt in high schools 3 iv. task & task-based approach.3v. the application of task-based reading .41. reading process.5

2、2. task design for reading.63. development of communicative competence.74. reading more selectively.7vi. development of creative competence91. developing intuitive thinking.9vii. conclusion.11references.11a probe of improving high schoolstudents reading abilityabstract: reading is an important aspec

3、t in english teaching. however, there exist many problems in teaching reading in high schools. for example, the teaching of grammatical knowledge is emphasized too much and language skill training is ignored, etc. the task-based reading is an innovation in english language teaching. it is based upon

4、 the idea that language is used for a genuine purpose meaning that real communication should take place. with the application of task-based reading in high schools, students learning strategy is highly efficient and their skills to use english will be improved as well.key words: task reading； readin

5、g ability; reading skill; creative competence摘 要： 阅读教学是英语教学的一个重要方面。 然而，在高中阅读的教学过程中仍然存在许多的问题。 例如，语法知识教学被强调太多，并且语言技能训练被忽略等等。基于任务性阅读是阅读在英语教学中的创新，根据语言的真正目的，使用交流来提高阅读。它基于任务性阅读应在高中学生阅读学习中。大大的提高学生的学习目的，并且提高了他们学习英语的技巧。 关键词： 任务性阅读；阅读能力；阅读技巧；创造能力i. introduction reading is an important part in english learning

6、, especially for high school students they have to attend college entrance examination, if they can do reading exercise better, they can get higher marks in examination. how to improve high school students reading ability? task-reading plays an important role. with this approach and the series of me

7、thods, teachers can not only track students progress in reading skills, but also stimulate the students desire to learn english and consequently make the reading lesson an efficient one. the task-reading approach exposes english language learners to authentic language and challenges them to interact

8、 naturally in the english reading. employed for communication, this approach makes english reading become a real means of interaction and sharing among students.ii. literature review nowadays, the research of reading is very popular in the second language acquisition and classroom research. in the p

9、ast twenty years, many applied linguists have made deep research on reading approach in different points of views. in recent years, there have been quite a few books published (e.g. willi, 1996; skehan, 1998).prabhu is the first person who presented reading approach to the teaching practice. he beli

10、eved that students might learn more effectively when their minds were focused on the reading, rather than on the language they were using. (prabhu, 1987:15). he is considered as the founder of reading learning activities. basically a task is a piece of meaning-focused work involving learners in comp

11、rehending, producing and/ or interacting in the target language, and that tasks are analyzed or categorized according to their goals, input data, activities, settings and roles. then what is task-based approach? according to david nunan, it is “an approach to the design of language course in which t

12、he point of departure is not an ordered list of linguistic items, but a collection of tasks”, (nunan, 1999:24) which have three components: goals, input and activities. because of its communicative features of tasks and activities and because of the creation of communicative tasks for teaching such

13、as vocabulary, pronunciation, semantics, pragmatics, or cohesion” (crookes & gass 1993:157). this approach has been gaining considerable attention within linguistics and more support from researchers. the designing of tasks becomes the key issue in practice.iii. the present situation and problems of

14、 elt in high schools over the last few years, high schools in china have been gradually introducing a new set of english textbooks - junior english for china 1-3 and senior english for china 1-3. these new books place more emphasis on speaking and listening skills than the previous texts did. high s

15、chool teachers, especially those in regular schools, generally think the new materials are quite satisfactory but find them difficult to teach. teachers who lack confidence in their reading english skills often tend to teach these materials the same way as they did for the old textbooks - by explain

16、ing the grammar and vocabulary in chinese. in general, most english teachers in junior middle schools are more accustomed to reading english and explaining its grammar than to speaking it. although the new curriculum encourages teachers to use communicative methods such as pair and small group work,

17、 yet the senior middle school entrance examinations still mainly test the language points as well as the grammatical knowledge. the testing system, to some extent, imposes a negative influence on elt in schools. for instance, teachers ignore the development of the students communicative competence,

18、but concentrate on teaching grammatical and lexical items. the result is that many students may succeed in scoring high grades in the exams, but they fail to use even simple english for the purpose of real communication. the other problem is that, english teaching in high schools is still far from b

19、eing satisfactory, and unable to meet the needs of the development of our country. most of the students have found it hard to understand simple english paper. the grammar-focused teaching methods and the rigid written exams have hampered the effectiveness of both teaching and learning. in order to m

20、eet the needs of the students, it is extremely important that the teaching approach of reading in high school should be changed. in this paper, i would like to suggest a new approach for teaching reading - task-based reading teaching through which high school students can be taught more effectively.

21、 this approach is intended to help them develop their reading competence in the target language as well as their competence of creative thinking.iv. task & task-based approach basically a task is a piece of meaning-focused work involving learners in comprehending, producing and/or interacting in the

22、 target language, and that tasks are analyzed or categorized according to their goals, input data, activities, settings and roles. then what is task-based approach? according to david nunan, it is “an approach to the design of language course in which the point of departure is not an ordered list of

23、 linguistic items, but a collection of tasks”, (nunan, 1999:24) which have three components: goals, input and activities. the assumptions of this theory is summarized by feez (1998:17, cited by richards & rodgers, 2001: 224) as follows: (1) the focus is on process rather than product; (2) its basic

24、elements are purposeful activities and tasks that emphasize communication and meaning;(3) learners learn language while engaged in the activities and tasks; (4) activities and tasks can be either those that learners might need to achieve in real life or those that there is a pedagogical purpose spec

25、ific to the classroom;(5) activities and tasks are sequenced according to difficulty; because of its communicative features of tasks and activities and because of the creation of communicative tasks for teaching such as vocabulary, pronunciation, semantics, pragmatics, or cohesion” (crookes & gass 1

26、993:157). this approach has been gaining considerable attention within linguistics and more support from researchers. and just because of “the use of tasks as the core in unit planning and instruction”, the designing of tasks becomes the key issue in practice.v. the application of task-based reading

27、a number of theories of language learning have evolved in the past, attempting to explain the processes by which a language other than the native language is being acquired in a natural or classroom setting. for example, krashens input hypothesis (krashen, 1985: 56) focuses on language acquisition i

28、n the classroom. his theory suggests that language learning only occurs under certain conditions, e.g. when students receive optimal comprehensible and interesting input from their instructors beyond their present level of competence and not presented in grammatical sequences. language acquisition t

29、akes place as a subconscious learning process which results in real communication skills, rather than actively learning grammar and structural rules of the target language. longs interaction hypothesis (long, 1981: 11) serves as yet another theory in language acquisition. according to longs theory l

30、anguage learners need to be active learners and participants when receiving language input. only listening to new language structures will not lead to successful language learning. the learner has to become an active participant in the target language by using received input in immediate interaction

31、 and communicative patterns with other learners.1. reading processhere take an extensive reading class as an example. the students were required to read a short story -sara says no written by r.l.scott-buccleuch (england). this story is about sara and her father mr. fruit who is dishonest. they live

32、 on selling fruits, but mr fruit always cheats his customers. thats why sara says no. the tasks for the reading are as follow:pre-readingtask 1: christmas day is coming. here are some presents for you to choose- the wealth, the happiness, the honesty, the success, the wisdom, and the health. which o

33、ne would you choose? why?while-readingtask 2: why does sara say no? and what do you think of sara?task 3: what do you think of mr. fruit?task 4: what do you learn from this story? task report is the core of the task-based reading which provides opportunity for language use; engaging in planning post

34、-task, in which students can draft and rehearse their public performance, and reporting, the public performance which itself heightens attention to form and accuracy. the post-reading task is designed as follow:post-readingtask 5: some students are afraid of exams. they often cheat in exams. what do

35、 you think of their cheating action? the teacher tries to build a language speaking environment, adopt many ways and encourage students to open their mouths to speak, allow the students to be themselves rather than expecting them to conform to the teachers preconceived ideas about how they should be

36、have. after the students finish their speaking in class, the teacher should encourage them and let the students feel they have made some progress with a sense of their fulfillment. the last is concerned with writing which is focused on practicing writing. students are required to write a composition

37、 related to what is discussed in class. thus helps students consolidate linguistic items and develop their writing skill as well. therefore, task-based reading focuses not only on developing students reading skill and self-instruction competence, but also on improving their essential communicative s

38、kills, as well as on their development of cognitive skills.2. task design for reading task is a positive technique in teaching reading. how to design tasks that can generate the students participation in the teaching of reading so that the tasks really have an effect on the students efl acquisition?

39、 in terms of communicative value and orientation, some researches both on efl and second language classrooms have already found that there are mainly two types of tasks, open tasks and closed tasks (ellis, 1999). the closed tasks permit only one acceptable answer. for example, in checking the studen

40、ts understanding of lesson 94, the writer designed a task involving the main idea of the text like this: “what is the place of interest introduced in this text?” the only right answer is “ayers rock in the center of australia. after scanning the whole text, tasks for comprehension were designed like

41、: “how far is ayres rock from sydney? what does ayres rock look like? when is the most beautiful time of the day? ” all of these tasks are closed ones. the exchange encouraged the students to display or present their understanding of the text. at the same time, the students speaking ability was prac

42、ticed, because such tasks are both clear and available to the majority of the students. the stronger ones provide the information they obtained from the text via their answers rather than through the teachers input, while the weaker ones could get an opportunity to participate. thus, the students co

43、uld have a good consolidation of the text through the teachers reading tasks. but this exchange is only a transmission of the text, not real communication. open tasks permit a number of different ideas which require the students to provide all the possible ideas. so the writer further designed tasks

44、 for some deeper learning of the text material as follows: what is magic about ayres rock? (some integration was required in accomplishing this task. thus the writer really wanted the students imagination and description.). then the other task was like: would you like to go to australia after learni

45、ng the text? why?the students were required to exchange their opinions and ideas. this exchange was rather communicative and meaningful, because it carried some real information gap not only between the teacher and the students, but between the students themselves. it was more open than the previous

46、 exchange for comprehension and consolidation. the students couldnt get the information directly from the text, but they were related to the text. the students could hardly accomplish them so promptly as the closed ones. these tasks certainly bore learning value, which stimulated thinking and respon

47、ses that would probe more deeply in the text material. therefore, the students found the tasks interesting, challenging or stimulating. so far as the reading interaction or exchange is concerned, the teachers task designs should be varied and adjustable according to the students level of proficiency

48、. and the tasks he/she designs should be so effective as to elicit fairly prompt, motivated, relevant and full response. if, on the other hand, the tasks result in long silences, then there is probably something wrong. it is necessary for the teacher to make some adjustment, so that he or she will s

49、uccessfully get the students to engage with the language material actively through speech. and this will make the task-based reading more effectively.3. development of communicative competence english learning is meaningless unless students can acquire communicative competence. the task-based readin

50、g is effective for developing such competence. task-based reading is part of whole communicative tasks in the foreign language classroom. nunan defines a communicative task as “a piece of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing, or interacting in the target l

51、anguage while their attention is focused on meaning rather than form” (nunan, 1993:5). the idea is to get something done via the language, to read a text and do something with the information. it is a type of communicative activity that involves the transfer of information from the text to form, tab

52、le or diagram. such activities are intended to help develop the learners communicative competence by engaging them in meaning-focused communication.4. reading more selectivelywhen you read anything, your objective is not to look at every word and picture as fast as you can. rather, it is to identify

53、 and understand useful ideas as efficiently as possible, and then to either transfer this information to long term memory or note it for future reference. imagine arriving at a large lake and being told that somewhere in the water there is a buried treasure. to find that treasure, you could either p

54、ut on your trunks and go for a swim, or jump in a high speed boat with radar programmed to detect the presence of anything resembling the treasure. this would allow you to do a fairly quick pass over the entire lake, noting areas that look promising, and then go back to each promising location, drop

55、 anchor, and go for a dive. you are much more likely to find the treasure because you will have eliminated huge portions of the lake very quickly. when it comes to reading, your subconscious mind is your radar, and it is “programmed” when you invest time in “self-communicating” the outcome you are t

56、rying to create. of course, when it comes to reading selectively, the most important thing is to make sure you are swimming in the right lake! any time im presented with an information rich environment, such as a bookstore or a trade convention like comdex, i invest time up front getting clear on my

57、 goals, and then do some high speed scans over the entire terrain before diving into a single book or booth. it often takes discipline to finish the complete scan before stopping at an extremely promising location. ray dolby, inventor of dolby noise reduction, encourages would-be inventors not to jump at the first solution because sometimes the really elegant solution is right around the corner. i have just described a rather left-brain approach to reading. its complementary opposite is to allocate some time looking for the unexpected. the key to