The Investigation Of Paraphrase-based Teaching In Senior High School TEFL

With the importance of cultivating learners’comprehensive language ability being advocated in the new curriculum reform, lots of English teachers gradually follow the direction and experiment on some new teaching methods, which promote both the exam performance and comprehensive language ability. Nowadays, paraphrase-based teaching has shown its advantage in improving language ability and thinking ability among the research of language learning at home and abroad. However, the current research subjects mainly center on college students in China. The reason is that paraphrasing ability demands that learners should be equipped with a certain language foundation and middle school teachers regard paraphrase teaching as a strategy which impedes the schedule and efficacy of classroom teaching. According to the hierarchical curriculum standard, junior high graduates should have reached the fifth level, which shows that senior high school students have been equipped with the ability to paraphrase. And this study aims at exploring the applicability of paraphrase teaching in senior high school. In order to optimize the English classroom teaching, the author will also provide some specific procedures and suggestions to implement paraphrase teaching.In this study, participants are 62 students belonging to the same class and their English teacher in Senior Grade 2. Three instruments are used which includes classroom observation, quiz and interview. Efforts are made to answer the following three questions. Firstly, what are the traits of paraphrase-based teaching implemented in senior high school? Secondly, what are the effects of paraphrase-based teaching on senior high school learners? Thirdly, what are teacher and learners perceptions of paraphrase-based teaching in senior high school?Results in this study collectively reflect in the following three aspects:firstly, the implementation of paraphrase teaching in senior high school English teaching has four significant features:1. Paraphrase-based teaching is mainly used in intensive reading comprehension and language points study.2. Paraphrase-based teaching for reading comprehension is meaning-based and integrates the flexible application of comprehensive language competence.3. In language points study, the strategy to paraphrase goes in three levels:vocabulary-level, phrasal-level and sentential level. The level used varies with the difficulty of the learning materials.4. Paraphrase-based teaching centers more on individual understanding of the target material than setting standard answers. Then, the teacher’s long-term use of paraphrase-based teaching can have positive influence on learners’ habit of paraphrasing, comprehensive language competence, metacognitive ability, thinking ability and test-taking ability. Lastly, the teacher and learners perceptions of paraphrase teaching are as follows:1. The teacher’s purpose of paraphrase-based teaching aims at developing learners’ reading ability, test-taking ability and self-learning ability.2. Learners indeed identify their well adaptation to paraphrase-based teaching in a short period. Meanwhile they realize the improvement of comprehensive language ability and thinking ability. Thus the purpose of paraphrase teaching is in accordance with the effects of learning. The idea and method of paraphrase teaching is in accordance with learners’ experience of learning.Results from this research assure the author of the applicability of paraphrase-based teaching in senior high school which promotes learners’ comprehensive language ability, metacognitive awareness and thinking ability. Based on this study, the author summarizes some details need consideration when implementing paraphrase teaching. The author also suggests that teachers should explore more teaching methods to complement with paraphrase teaching in order to better improve learners’comprehensive language ability.