| This instructional design is concerned with an English Reading section in Unit6,8A, The Taiwan earthquake, based on top-down approach. The theoretical bases of the instructional design are system theory and constructivism learning theory. The significance of this instructional design lies in three aspects:facilitating the grasp of the text by top-down approach, promoting students’confidence and cooperation and offering some references for reading teaching.This instructional design is composed of three parts:pre-design analyses of its major elements, design of teaching process and post-design reflections.Pre-design analyses of its major elements include analyses of learners, teaching contents and teaching objectives. In terms of learners, these students come from the second grade of junior high school in Baoying, Yangzhou. The learners have three characteristics. The first one is that they have less interest in learning English than other subjects. The second one is that the learners have different English proficiency. The third one is that they are under great pressure from parents, teachers and classmates. In terms of teaching contents, the teacher selects Reading section The Taiwan earthquake of Oxford English8A, which could serve the purpose of instructional design based on top-down approach and improve students’reading skills. In terms of teaching objectives, there are three aspects including language skills, language knowledge and affective factors. In term of language skills, students should use top-down approach to read the text so as to improve their reading skills. In terms of language knowledge, students should grasp new words, phrases and some sentences about earthquake, In terms of affective factors, teacher would cultivate their positive affects including their interest in studying English, confidence on themselves and cooperation with others.The specific instructional design consists of five steps:lead in with a video about natural disasters; close reading with a focus on confirmation of the beginning of the earthquake based on prediction; close reading with a focus on confirmation of the middle of the earthquake based on prediction; close reading with a focus on confirmation of the end of the earthquake based on prediction; assignment with a focus on consolidation of the text by retelling the story.The reflections on the instructional design involve reflections on the teaching objectives in terms of language skills, language knowledge and affective factors, reflections on the teaching process and the revised instructional design based on the reflections. Generally speaking, the teaching objectives are achieved, which can be shown in three aspects. The first one is about language skills and students could grasp the text well through top-down approach. The second one is about language knowledge. Students have grasped the words, phrases and difficult sentences in this text. The third one is about affective skills, that is, this lesson gradually arouses their interest, enhances their confidence and increases their awareness of cooperation. In terms of design of teaching process, the instructional design as a whole is successful except for some problems, such as inadequate background information in the lead-in part; some difficult words resulting in their difficulty with comprehension and a bit difficulty in retelling the text for the students in the assignment.Based on the reflections above, four revisions are made as follows. First of all, teacher should add more background information of earthquake at the beginning of the class; secondly, teacher should ask students to study the words before class and give some explanation of new words where necessary; thirdly, teacher should help students if they have any questions when using the top-down approach so as to build their confidence on learning English. Finally, assignment with a focus on consolidation of the text in the last process should be changed into filling in blanks. |
