Research On Strategies For Teaching English Reading In Small Classes Of Low-Achieving Junior Middle School Students

Reading is a basic language skill for getting information for both practical and learning purposes.In the case of English language learning,reading is an important way of input and developing students’ reading comprehension ability plays an important part in teaching English in junior middle schools.This is a crucial stage for students to have a right attitude towards English learning.This is also in line with the new curriculum standards in Shanghai which emphasize developing students’ English reading skills and comprehension.Therefore,teachers of English in junior middle schools are not only expected to teach students the knowledge of English,but also help students get the skills of reading effectively.The teacher should also use appropriate approaches to help the students master useful reading skills and strategies.This essay aims to find out difficulties low-achieving students’ are facing in English reading by investigation and analysis of the main problems.With the help of educational and psychological theories,the author intends to find out helpful and efficient ways of improving low-achieving junior middle school students’ reading strategies and comprehensive abilities related to learning English,helping such students to establish good reading habits and arousing their interest in reading English as well.Constructionism is one of the most influential theories in the field of education and psychology.The author intends to use this as a basic guiding theory to develop the main ideas of this dissertation,together with the Scaffolding Theory and the Zone of Proximal Development.To begin with,the author makes an effort to explain the current situation of teaching English reading in the public junior middle schools.With the help of a summary of theories and research findings in relation to teaching English reading,the author tries to explore the problems in traditional reading patterns and analyse reasons behind and the background information of low-achieving students in public junior middle schools.Surveys and experiments have been designed to find out possible ways for helping the students.The research instruments include questionnaires,interviews and tests.A comparison has been made to find out if there is any difference in the results of low-achieving students’ reading ability and reading habits before and after the experiments.The data analysisis intended to support the changes which took place during the experiment.As a result,the author tries to point out the advantages of a small class way of teaching and tries to list possible approaches and strategies for better teaching of English reading.However,the author admits that there are both strengths and weaknesses in this study and more learning,study and research work need to be done by the author for further improvement in the field of teaching English reading in a small class of junior middle school students.