A Study Of English Classroom Reading Activity Design Based On Text Reconstruction In Senior High Schools

At present,owning to the pressure of College Entrance Examination and the limitation of students’ English level,majorities of teachers pay more attention to vocabulary and grammar points than to the reading text itself,which leads to students not meeting the requirements of English Curriculum Standard.Text reconstruction refers to selection,integration,and form transformation of the teaching text,which provides authentic context and is beneficial to transfer of knowledge.In English reading class,text reconstruction activities mainly include text transformation,sequencing,role play,summary and so on.The present study shows that applying text reconstruction to reading activities can formulate deep interpretation of the teaching materials and improve students’ reading ability.Therefore,the study is trying to explore whether classroom reading activity based on text reconstruction can improve students’ reading achievements and the effect of classroom reading activity based on text reconstruction on students’ reading strategies.The study is based on constructivism theory,schema theory and Swain’s output hypothesis and experimental and quantitative study are adopted in the research.First,an experiment in two classes in Senior one of Minqin Number one middle school is carried out.Totally 72 students take park in the experiment and 36 in each class: one is the control class and the other the experimental class.Before the experiment,a pre-test is carried out in order to check whether the students in the two classes are in the same English level and are parallel groups.Then the control class is under the traditional reading teaching method focusing on explanation on vocabulary and grammar while the experimental class adopts the method of designing classroom reading activity based on text reconstruction.According to different teaching materials,the actual situation of students and the requirements of English Curriculum Standard(Experiment)(2003),various text reconstruction activities are first designed by the author and then these activities are performed by the students in the experimental class,such as role play,summary,sequencing and text transformation.In order to finish these text reconstruction activities mentioned above efficiently in class,the author needs to instruct students to use cognitive strategies,meta-cognitive strategies and social-affective strategies in the process of carrying out text reconstruction activities.After a two-month experiment,the students in the control class and experimental class are asked to take a post-test for reading and a questionnaire for reading strategies.The students from the two classes are investigated to find out whether text reconstruction activities have some significant influence on students’ reading strategies.The results of the test for reading and questionnaire for reading strategies were tested by independent samples T test.The study shows that classroom reading activity based on text reconstruction can improve students’ reading achievements and has effect on students’ reading strategies,which can promote students to use cognitive strategies,meta-cognitive strategies and social-affective in their regular reading,especially the use of cognitive strategies.Therefore,English teachers in senior high schools should focus on the design of classroom reading activity and interpretation of texts to improve students’ reading competence.