A Case Study Of Research-based Instruction Of English Reading

This study is intended to explore the main characteristics of research-based instruction, namely, student-centeredness, inquiry and openness and how they are respectively manifested in a 45-minute period of English Reading class with the help of a classroom observation scheme based on the COLT scheme.The research questions to be addressed in this study are as follows:1. How is student-centeredness in research-based instruction manifested?2. How is inquiry in research-based instruction manifested?3. How is openness in research-based instruction manifested?The theoretical framework of this study was mainly based on the Constructivist and Humanistic learning theories proposed by Piaget and Rogers respectively. The subject was a 45-minute period of classroom instruction which won the first-prize in a research-based instruction contest held by School of Foreign Languages, Yangzhou University. The instruments were the researcher himself and a classroom observation scheme. Data collection included two steps, one was to observe the class directly through class attendance, the other was to observe the video-tape of this period repeatedly and then transcribe the teacher's talk and the students'talk into word scripts. Data analysis included the calculations of the ratios of the students'talk and the teacher's talk, the ratios of the turns initiated by the teacher and the students respectively, the ratio of other activities, the ratio of questioning in the teacher's talk, questions distribution, the ratios of display questions and referential questions, and participant organization.The major findings from this study are as follows:Firstly, this period of classroom instruction is moderately students-centered in terms of the ratio of students'talk, the ratio of the turns initiated by the students and the ratio of other activities. The ratio of the students'talk was 20% and the ratio of the turns initiated by the students was 33% in this period, much lower in comparison to the results of other studies. However, the ratio of other activities (38%) is much higher compared to Zhou & Zhou's findings, ranging from 7%-33%. This means that the students were not only given opportunities to apply their target language to practice but encouraged to search information from the internet or supplementary reading material. This indicates that on one hand, teachers have been paying more and more attention to students'subjective initiative and the development of their ability to solve problems through various activities, on the other, the transition from the traditional teacher-centered classes to student-centered ones is no easy job and will take a long period of time.Secondly, this period of classroom instruction in this period is highly question-driven in terms of the ratio of questioning in the teacher's talk and the distribution of questions. This period started with initiating questions and ended with finding answers to the questions. Questions took up 78.95% of the teacher's talk. Meanwhile, in terms of the distribution of questions, there were 18 general solicits (72%) and 7 personal solicits (28%). This indicates that in research-based classroom instructions, the focus of instruction have shifted from passing on knowledge to solving problems and all the students should be involved in this process.Thirdly, this period is highly open in terms of the content and forms of instruction. Both the teacher and the students no longer focus their attention on the textbook, instead, they transformed the classroom instruction into a problem-solving process. Among all the 25 questions discussed in this period, there were 15 display questions and 10 referential questions, occupying 60% and 40% respectively. The students were highly motivated to solve problems with their creativity. In terms of participant organization, class activity occupied 44.44%, group activity occupied 17.78% and individual activity occupied 37.78%. This indicates that research-based instruction calls for a fundamental change in pedagogy, not just in terms of external forms, but in terms of internal essence.However, there are three major limitations in this research.Firstly, the scheme employed in the present study only covers seven factors related to research-based instruction. There are more factors to be studied and the scheme needs to be more complete and reliable.Secondly, the present research only studies one single period of classroom instruction which is only a small part of the whole research-based instruction activity. The results would be more reliable if the whole process including pre-class preparations and post-class reflections were taken into account.Thirdly, only one teacher's example is studied. The results would be more convincing if successful examples of more teachers were studied and something common was revealed.