A Study Of The Application Of "Viewing For Reading" In High School English Teaching

In the information age,the new media is widely appearing in public.Our lives are filled with various pictures,symbols,videos and animations.The information is growing exponentially.Thus,the traditional text-only reading mode can no longer satisfy people's needs.To quickly obtain useful information from these non-text resources has become a great challenge for contemporary language learners.As a result,English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School(2017 edition)has made timely adjustments to extend the four language skills to five ones,that is,“listening,speaking,reading,viewing and writing”.Among them,“listening”,“reading” and“viewing” are comprehension skills,while “speaking” and “writing” are expression skills.The new skill of “viewing” here refers to the skill of using graphics,tables,animations,symbols,and videos to understand meanings of a multi-modal discourse.This skill is particularly important in the new media era.In the process of using a language,the language skills are usually not used separately.The use of comprehension skills can be combined with that of expression skills.And the use of the three comprehension skills themselves can also promote each other to some extent.In the thesis,the researcher focuses on the language skills of “viewing” and“reading",and puts forward “viewing for reading”,that is,to promote the effectiveness of students' reading by applying activities of “viewing” in the process of“reading”.The Dual Coding Theory and the Schema Theory are used as the theoretical basis in the study.Through an empirical study,the application effect of the teaching mode in a high school is explored.The experiment is aimed at answering the following three questions:(1)What are the students' attitudes to the teaching mode of “viewing for reading”?(2)What are the feasible means to implement “viewing for reading” in highschool English teaching?(3)Compared with the traditional teaching mode,what are the effects of“viewing for reading” on high school English teaching?In order to answer the three questions above,the researcher conducted an experiment at the Ji Gang Senior High School in Shandong Province.First,a questionnaire is distributed to the English teachers of the school so that the researcher can get a preliminary understanding of their views on the skill of “viewing” added in the New Curriculum Standards and some suggestions for the teaching mode of“viewing for reading”.Then two active teachers among them are selected to give an interview so that the researcher can get a further understanding of the specific methods of “viewing for reading” that these teachers might use in the classroom.Then,according to the school test results of the new semester of the high school students of Grade One,the researcher selects two parallel classes with similar English levels.One of the two classes is set as experimental class and the other is the control class.In the experimental class,the teaching mode of “viewing for reading” is employed,while in the control class,the traditional teaching method is used continuously.The whole experiment lasts for three months.Finally,the students in the two classes are tested in the same way.And the attitudes of the students in the experimental class are investigated in the form of questionnaires.After statistical analysis of the teachers' questionnaires and interviews as well as the test scores and questionnaires of the students,it can be proved that:(1)Most students were willing to use pictures,forms,videos and some other visual means to assist them at the pre-reading and fast-reading stages,and believed that these means could help arouse their reading interests,clarify the structures of reading texts and enrich their background knowledge.(2)The seven visual means of pictures,forms,flow charts,mind maps,stick figures,short videos,and movies got good feedbacks from teachers and students.(3)Three months later,the reading test grades of the experimental class was better than that of the control class,and the former's progress in understanding of main ideas questions and inference questions was obvious.Based on the findings above,the researcher concludes with the relevant teaching implications,the limitations of this study,as well as the suggestions for future research.