A Study On The Application Of Esa Model To The Teaching Of English Reading In Junior High School

English classroom teaching consists of three necessary elements,which are Engage,Study and Activate(ESA model for short).The three basic sequence of the ESA model are Straight Arrows Sequence,Boomerang Sequence and Patchwork Sequence(Harmer,2000).This model is student centered and easy to operate.Teachers could flexibly change teaching steps according to students' classroom learning to create a more comfortable and relaxing learning atmosphere for students.In the fall of 2018-2019,the author worked as an intern in the New District School of No.1 High School of Pingdingshan and observed that the students' interests in learning of English reading was not as high as expected.The atmosphere of the reading class was listless and the reading comprehension ability of the students had not yet reached the required level of The English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2011 edition).Therefore,guided by the constructivism theory and the zone of proximal development,the author carried out an action research with the application of ESA model to explore the following three questions:(1)What changes will take place after the application of the ESA model?(2)What problems may arise in the process of the application of the ESA model?(3)What are the causes for the problems with the application of the ESA model?The subjects of the action research are the 68 students who are in Class One,Grade Eight in the New District School of No.1 High School of Pingdingshan.The research period is the first four months of the first semester of 2018-2019 academic year.In the process of carrying out the action research,the author adopted the questionnaire on the current situation of English reading of Grade Eight students,the questionnaire on the teaching effect of English reading of Grade Eight students,student interview and teaching journals to testify the effectiveness of the ESA model in the teaching of English reading.Finally,all the data obtained during the research was analyzed to draw a conclusion.The results of the research proved that the students developed their interests in English reading,improved the reading comprehension ability and cultivated the English reading habit with the application of the ESA model.However,there were part of the students who were still not interested in the learning of English reading.They cannot follow the teaching steps of the teacher and they showed no interest in taking part in the activities in the class.Naturally,the reading strategies they have learned in class could not be used skillfully after class.The causes for the problems were: The teacher paid much attention to the whole class in Engage stage while ignoring the differences in interest between groups and individuals,resulting in low efficiency in Study stage and Activate stage.The students are weak in basic English knowledge,thus can hardly understand the teaching instructions and the meaning of the text accurately.There are great individual differences between students' real English levels,which have led to the different competences in English reading.