The Application Of The Whole Language Approach To English Reading Teaching In Senior High School

It is universally acknowledged that reading is one of the most important methods to acquire knowledge and information,and that is the same in the language-learning area.On the topic of this thesis,researches about English reading teaching have been published all over the world,and some of them are considered to be remarkable.Yet,the study about reading teaching by applying the Whole Language Approach is relatively rare.The Whole Language Approach was introduced to China in about 1990 s,since this method is considerably new,not so many outstanding works have been published.The traditional teaching methods tend to teach English reading class parts by parts,or even divide the whole passage into sentences or single words.On the contrary,the Whole Language Approach regards reading as a whole,and it doesn’t tear the passage apart.So the author believes this is a new field that calls for further exploration.In this thesis,the author tries to apply this method to real practice.And in the process of that,the author hopes to find the answer to the following questions and apply the Whole Language Approach to the reading teaching class,aiming to offer the students a better English reading learning strategy in the end.(1)What’s the current situation of the use of the Whole Language Approach in English reading in senior high school?(2)Can the students’ learning interest of English reading be improved under the guidance of the Whole Language Approach?(3)During the experiment,in what ways can the students’ reading level be improved under the guidance of the Whole Language Approach?In this paper,two classes,experimental class(EC)and control class(CC),were chosen from a cram school in zhecheng county Henan province.which involved 40 students in total.Before the experiment,a pre-test was conducted in the two classes,in order to prove that the two classes shared the same level on the basis of English reading.At the same time,a questionnaire was conducted in the experimental class for the aim of understanding the current learning strategy the students are using in the matter of English reading learning.In order to make this experiment more reliable,this experiment lasted for about 6 months.In addition to the pre-test and post-test,another two tests were added to the experiment.In the EC,the author used the Whole Language Approach to teach the class,and this teaching method believes that the students are the center of the class.During the class,the teacher actually put the students on the top of his or her list.Before the class,the teacher provided the background information to the students about the passage they were going to learn.It is assumed that those background information could help them to have a better understanding about the passage.And during the class the teacher carried the passage by whole,which meant the passage wouldn’t be analyzed sentence by sentence or word by word.The teacher would ask the students to grasp the main ideas of the passage and retell the passage after class.While in the control class,the author continued applying the traditional teaching method-the Grammar Translation Method.During the 6 months’ training,there was one test conducted every 2 months for the purpose of getting the data about the progress the students got.There are four tests in total in this experiment.All the data and materials had shown that the students from EC did master a more efficient way of English reading learning after the experiment.And their learning interest of reading class has been improved obviously.There are six chapters in this thesis,and the main contents of the first chapter are: the research background,research significance,research questions,research methodology and the layout of the thesis.The second chapter is Literature review,which involves two relative theories about the English reading teaching in abroad and at home and the previously studies of the Whole Language Approach.The third chapter is the framework of the Whole Language Approach,which involves the definition,the theoretical basis,the purpose and contents and the general principles of the Whole Language Approach.And the forth chapter of the thesis is research design.Data analysis and discussion is the fifth chapter of the thesis.And the sixth chapter is the conclusion of the thesis,which includes the major findings,limitations and further suggestions.In the end,the author comes up with some practical suggestions for the purpose of that they can be helpful to the future studies in the field of reading teaching and learning.