1、Project Title How to Improve the Students Reading Ability Investigator In fulfillment of the course Practical Project Design Acknowledgment I am mostly grateful to my supervisor Wang Na, whose help and patience made this project get off the ground and come to a close smoothly. I am also grateful to
2、my good friend and colleague Liu Yan, who gave me lots of good advice before the project got off the ground. No amount of thanks will be adequate for my students without whose willing 2 participation in the project implementation it would have remained in my mind. Last but not the least; thanks are
3、given to my husband and my son who have shared with me my worries, frustrations, and hopefully my ultimate happiness in eventually finishing this project. Abstract The present study presents a detail report of a project implemented to solve the problem that most of my students are poor in reading co
4、mprehension I assign them to do after class or the materials in the test. I start with a brief introduction to reading. Necessary background knowledge, reading skills is provided.Among the methods of scientific investigation used are analytic method, 3 brainstorming, cause analysis and interview. Co
5、ntents 1. Introduction 2. Summary of the Preliminary Research 2.1 Problem 2.2 Problem analysis 4 2.3 Project objective 2.4 Project hypothesis 3. Project rational 4. Project design 4.1. Objective 4.2. Subject 4.3. Materials 5. Project Implementation 6 Data Analysis 7 Evaluation 8. Conclusion Appendix
6、 1. Introduction I have been teaching the students who are in their second year of a rural junior middle school. I have taught English in middle schools for 15 years. In my teaching I vet found there are some problems. Now Ill finish my study in Xuancheng TV University. I hope I can solve students r
7、eading problem that have troubled me for some time through the action research so that I can apply my knowledge and theory into practice I learned in Xuancheng TV University. So I made a timetable as a schedule. (To see Appendix A) 5 In learning a language, especially a foreign language, reading is
8、very important. We can get information from passages through reading. In final exams, the mark of reading makes up one third of the total test score. But most of the students tend to lose this part of scores. In my teaching, the problem identified was really a serious one. There must be something wr
9、ong in the activities I designed in my class. My preliminary research confirmed that there are four main reasons that accounted for the students problem: Firstly, it seems that they take no interest in reading. Secondly, some students dont spend time in reading English materials after class. Thirdly
10、, some students cant do reading tasks well because of their limited vocabulary. Of course, others cant understand because they dont know the real meaning of a certain word in the sentence. Fourthly, because of the absence of necessary knowledge background, still many of them dont have the inferring
11、and judging ability according to the context while reading. They do word-by-word reading, ignoring reading between the lines. Let alone the real meaning according to the whole passage. All these factors lead to their inability to understand the text. So they feel dull to do reading tasks. They cant
12、intentionality read. How to enhance the reading ability through organizing reading class well is very important. How to enhance the effect of teaching, the training the reading ability is an important question. 2. Summary of the Preliminary Research This part of my study was conducted during Septemb
13、er20November18, 2011. 2.1 Problem The problem I have in my teaching is that most of my students reading ability is poor. 2.2 Problem analysis The problem had been troubling me for a long time and now I was determined to find a solution to the problem. In my study, I used four methods of analysis. Be
14、fore I begin to design my new teaching plan, I would like to find out the reason why some of my students feel that it is difficult for them to do reading materials. I try to find the answers from three respects: the teacher, the students and the class size, and we should choose the right teaching ma
15、terials, neither too difficult nor too easy for them. Ill use four methods 6 to analyze it. . 2.2.1 Cause analysis In this situation, I asked myself a series of questions and tried to provide some answers for them. Why were most of my students afraid to do reading comprehension? In order to know mor
16、e about this issue, I designed a cause exploration procedure like this. Questions Answers 1. Is it because they do not like English? Maybe. 2. Is it because the reading tasks are poorly designed? Maybe. 3. Is it because they are not motivated? Possibly yes. 4.Is it because my instructions are not cl
17、ear？ Maybe. 5. Is it because they have lots of other things to do? Maybe. 6. Is it because they do not think reading is important and necessary? Maybe. 7. Is it because they have some difficulties unsolved by themselves? Yes. 2.2.2 Analytic method Through careful analysis, I was led to a series of q
18、uestions: For instance, I found a majority of my students are poor in doing reading comprehension, and I wanted to know why it should be the case, and whether they thought it important and necessary to do reading comprehension or not? If they thought it important and necessary, the problem was actua
19、lly caused by me, not by my students. Probably I didnt teach them good methods. The teachers side I have taught English for fifteen years. After reflecting on my teaching experience, I find most of my classes were taught by old-fashioned teaching methods by which I myself learned English. That is to
20、 say, when I was a student, my teacher used these methods to teach me .At that time, I found English so boring, but soon I got used to it. In class, I spend much time in explaining the meaning of the sentences, new words and grammar points at the beginning of my teaching. When I listened to the reco
21、rding of my lesson, I found I did most of talking in class. I found I did not give much time to my students to practice what they learned and give them few opportunities to read. I did not realize the problem until I learned the course English 7 Language Teaching Methodology. “Traditional methods of
22、 learning a foreign die hard. That is true. The students side From Questionnaire One (see appendix A), I know what the students think of the reading task. The following are the main reasons why they do not like reading the text. Some students English is weak, so they dont have confidence. They think
23、 their English is poor and they do not quite understand some words and sentences in the text, even if they know the words. They lack logical, assuming and reasoning ability, so they cant understand the text exactly. Some students lack the necessary background knowledge, even if they can read the pas
24、sages; they cant do the multiple correctly. Some students told me that when the content of the text was not familiar with them, they felt that they didnt have any interest to read it. Some do not think it is necessary to read in class. They think they only learn the basic language knowledge, and the
25、y dont need to do more reading. A few students think reading in class is a waste of time. The teacher should tell them more important things about reading strategies in class. The size of the class The class size of 57 students might have some negative effect. There are too many students. It is impo
26、ssible to give every student the chance to tell the meaning of the passage. The few chances for students to read may be given to those who do not want to read while the other may never have the chance to practice reading, they may do irrelevant things in class while others are learning. All these re
27、asons make the students unable to read on their own initiative, so the reading class hasnt got any effectiveness. 2.2.3 Brainstorming activation I discussed the problem with my students and colleagues. They gave me lots of advice and help so that I thought the problem more deeply and carefully. 2.2.
28、4 Interview I interviewed several students and find out my weak points: I just told them we would do some reading exercises. I didnt tell them how to do, how to deal with the new words and the reading background. 8 After a lengthy problem analysis, I was determined to launch a project to overcome th
29、is problem. 2.3. Project objective My research objective is to enhance my students ability in doing reading comprehension by positive reading. 2.4. Project Hypothesis It is hypothesized that the students reading ability can be improved by the introduction of effective use of some reading skills. 3.
30、Project rational Of course, there are many factors in positive reading. I especially mention the three factors below. 3.1. Interest is the firstly important factor of positive reading. In my opinion, interest is very important in learning a language. This is because there are too many things to reme
31、mber. What more, they live in a native language environment; they can get less information through English. So it is difficult to keep the interest in English. Its impossible to learn English well without enough interest. Einstein ever said “Interest is the best teacher”. We must arouse the students
32、 interest from various aspects. For example: the situation of society, using real object tools and stick figures, choosing the humorous passages, English parties etc. Through these ways, I can arouse the students interest in English and make them learn English effectively. 3.2. Providing some backgr
33、ound knowledge is necessary. It is not uncommon that sometimes when you take up a text in a foreign language, you know every word but still cant catch its meaning. Usually we dont know why. We dont know where the difficulty lies. As a matter of fact, its necessary to introduce the background sometim
34、es. 3.3. The effective reading ways are skimming,scanning and inferring. There are three main kinds of reading ways: skimming, scanning, and inferring. Skimming is not careful reading; the reader usually moves his eyes over the text very quickly just in order to get the main idea of it or to decide
35、whether it is worth reading more deeply or not. Skimming enables readers to look efficiently for something that interests them without 9 spending too much time reading what is unnecessary or interesting. Scanning means locating specific information you, the reader, want from the text, you do not nec
36、essarily follow the order of information in the passage but can go back and forth to read the part of the text to your purpose, it is a time and energy saving activity, which should help you increase your reading speed and efficiency. Inferring means making use of syntactic, logical and cultural clu
37、es to discover the meaning of unknown elements. These may be the writers opinions and attitudes which are not directly stated in the text. Making inference while reading usually will help the readers to achieve a better understanding of the text. One point worth mentioning is that inference must be
38、made with care and supported by evidence. 4. Projective design I designed an adequate a mount of activities to test the hypothesis. If the activities are better designed, the students reading ability will improve accordingly. In my project, I have designed three activities to be tried out in three w
39、eeks. Week 1 Activity 1 Reading: For use Go For It, Book8, A Purpose: to talk something about some famous men to stimulate their interests, and to learn some background. Instructions: Students listen to the teachers introduction and know something about famous man, Li Yundi as a leading-in step in o
40、rder to arouse their interest. Procedures: 1) 1. Asking more students to say something about the famous man to arouse their interests. 2) Give some information about Li Yundi. 3) Form some groups to discuss the questions. 4) Use various types of task and reading strategies to get efficient result. I
41、 will give the students some photos and videos and ask more to arouse the students will to read. I use some interesting activities to stimulate the students interest, providing them with a chance to use their imagination and creative ability I give more background information about the text to the s
42、tudents. In this stage, students are asked some questions to see how much information about the text they have known. 10 Week 2 Activity 2 Purpose: To catch the main ideas of a text through skimming, scanning and note making to understand the text . Instructions: I remind the students the steps to r
43、ead. Procedures: The students begin to read the text and come to the next page-reading. In this stage students are to read the text several times using different ways: skimming, scanning, and then closing reading, each time they will be given different questions, so that they can understand the text
44、 better while reading. Take the passage Li Yundi for example, the first two questions are: How old is Li Yundi? And what does he do? Etc. Week 3 Activity 3 Purpose: to test the students how much they master the reading material, to improve their inferring ability Introduction: Students check their u
45、nderstanding by doing filling blanks exercise. Procedures: 1. Some other activities are used in the stage, such as guessing the meaning of new words and expressions in the text, making notes, listening to the tape of the text, some exercises on grammar points and so on. To enhance their interests an
46、d make them read initiatively. I design this reading class. I try to help the students to have a great improvement through my reading course. 2. Then I ask some of my students to retell the passage to improve their understanding. 5. Project Implementation My students are in Grade 8. It took me three
47、 weeks to implement my project. For each week I am scheduled to do these: 5.1. Teaching notes ( to see Appendix D) 5.2. Teaching diaries: (to see Appendix E) 6. Data analysis: I use two questionnaires at different time in this project to see if my design can prove my 11 hypotheses. Questionnaire 2 i
48、s designed partly based on Questionnaire 1 in the research so that comparisons can be made to see the improvement after the implementation. There are the same three questions used in two questionnaires to get the students general opinion about reading. (See Appendix B and C) The questions deal with three aspects: degree of interest, help and difficulty in their reading work. The followings a
