Teaching English Using The 21～(st) Century Teens Newspaper To Enhance Students' Reading And Writing Competence In Senior Middle Schools

The new middle school English course requires that teachers should develop the students' competence of thinking in English and expressing in English gradually and especially foster the students' ability to obtain and process information in English as well as the ability to analyze and solve problems in English on the basis that students' basic language capability is further developed according to senior middle school students' cognition characteristics and their demand for further learning. Senior English Curriculum Standards (Experimental) clarifies that English newspapers and magazines belong to social English resources. Senior English curriculum objectives require that senior middle school students should be able to read English newspapers and magazines whose language matches their present English level.21st Century Teens enjoys up-to-date information with a wide range of topics. Its language is modern and practical. The newspaper closely follows the present trends in life, while the language in this newspaper is neither too hard nor too easy for the senior middle school students to grasp, thus becoming a most suitable material to develop the students' reading and writing ability. This thesis aims at evoking senior middle school students' reading interest and helping them to master some effective reading methods. In the mean time, the thesis also aims at guiding the students to appreciate the beauty of language in the newspaper and learn some practical writing skills from the newspaper. The ultimate goal of the thesis is to enhance senior middle school students' reading and writing competence through the teaching of 21st Century Teens. The thesis also explores the ways to make full use of the English newspaper in senior middle school English teaching.The present thesis gives a brief introduction to Krashen's Input Hypothesis and Swain's Output Hypothesis, with the relationship between language input and output analyzed. It also introduces to the readers the definitions of teaching strategy, cooperative learning/ collaborative learning and its theoretical basis. Then a discussion is followed to present the researches done in the field of senior middle school English teaching and the achievements, advantages and disadvantages of these researches. The thesis also reports the present situation of teaching English reading and writing in senior middle schools in China. In addition to that, the thesis explores the contradictions between senior middle school students' present reading and writing competence and the requirements of Senior English Curriculum Standards (Experimental).The author has done systematic investigations and researches and managed to come up with a set of practical strategies of teaching English newspapers, combining her own teaching experience. The author explores a new model of training reading and writing skills using the English newspaper. The model enables the teacher to combine reading and writing strategies in the teaching of English newspapers and offers a variety of classroom activities to foster the students' reading and writing capability. This thesis focuses on the scope of teaching strategies, say, how to teach the students to learn English. It discusses the scientific and effective methods of English newspaper teaching in senior middle schools in China under the condition of the new English course, combining the theories of Comprehensive Input, Intake and Output, as well as the Resource Strategy in the process of English newspaper teaching. After the research, both the teacher and the students participated get a better understanding of the characteristics of English newspapers, with their basic language knowledge strengthened, the reading and writing strategies mastered, reading and writing competence enhanced, thus forming a good reading habit. English newspaper teaching satisfies the students' demands from all aspects. It also improves the effect of classroom teaching and promotes the students' cooperation and team work. Meanwhile, the students turn out to be able to read English more independently, with their vocabulary enlarged, their capability of analyzing, understanding and writing developed.This thesis combines the theories of Comprehensive Input, Input and Output Hypotheses, the Resource Strategy, Cooperative Learning/ Collaborative Learning in the training of English reading and writing strategies. The author exploits the resource of English newspapers to carry out reading and writing activities in and out of classroom. She designs many student-centered activities based on 21^st Century Teens, aiming at training the students' reading and writing strategies, resulting in a promotion in the English reading and writing competence of the students.A wide diversity of vivid English newspaper teaching examples is illustrated in the present thesis, which is intended to offer a glimpse of the model—teaching English using the 21^st Century Teens newspaper to enhance students' reading and writing competence in senior middle schools—to enlighten and inspire senior middle school English teachers who are interested in the field of English newspaper teaching.