A Study On The Current Situation And Countermeasures Of Objective-Oriented English Reading Teaching In Junior Middle Schools

As a matter of fact,instructional objectives have served as the bridge to connect educational aims with classroom instruction.While they have played a crucial role in the guidance of learning,teaching and evaluation during the entire teaching and learning process,the fact that they are equally indispensable in facilitating the effectiveness of classroom instruction and cultivating students’ learning abilities are also rarely disputed among educational experts both at home and abroad.Nevertheless,despite its importance not enough attention has been paid to instructional objectives in our daily teaching,so that there are quite a few problems in teachers’ design,implementation and evaluation of instructional objectives.In the context of the English-subject core competences,English reading teaching has played a significant part in the cultivation of students’ language ability,cultural awareness,thinking quality and learning ability.For the junior middle school students who have just started to learn English systematically,reading teaching could not only help arouse their interests for the English language and enable them to accumulate the basic knowledge of the English subject,but also makes it possible for the teacher to help cultivate their comprehensive competences.Given the crucial role that instructional objectives have played both in the teaching and learning process and the significance of English reading teaching in cultivating students’ core competences,to examine the current situation of objective-oriented English reading teaching in junior middle schools and to find out the existing problems then have great guiding significance.To get a close look at the current situation of objective-oriented English reading teaching,the author has conducted a two-month research at the junior grades of a key middle school in Chongqing.The entire research is carried out on the theoretical basesof the revised taxonomy of objectives put forward by L.W.Anderson and his team and The Dick and Carey Model for Systematic Instructional Design,and under the guidance of the English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2011version),National English Curriculum Standards for Senior High Schools(2017version),and the core competences of the English subject.By using such research instruments as questionnaire,classroom observation and individual interview,it undertakes to answer these three questions as follows: 1)how do the teachers view and understand the instructional objectives in English reading teaching? 2)what is the current situation of their design,implementation,evaluation and attainment of instructional objectives in English reading teaching? 3)how should an objective-oriented English reading class be conducted?Based on those three research questions,this research is divided into five stages.In the first stage,26 valid questionnaires out of 29 were collected so as to have a general idea about the teachers’ views,understanding and implementation of instructional objectives.In the second stage,the author collected 17 lesson plans in order to further the examination on teachers’ design of instructional objectives and their relatedness to the classroom activities.In the third stage,30 classroom observations were randomly carried out,during which the author has put great emphasis on the participants’ performance in such four aspects as the design,implementation,evaluation and attainment of instructional objectives.In the fourth stage,in order to have a close look at the teachers’ understanding and implementation of instructional objectives and objective-based evaluation and reflection,the author invited three teachers who have relatively good performance in the questionnaires and classroom observations to take a face-to-face interview one by one.As it turns out,most of the English teachers at the junior grades of this school have recognized the importance of instructional objectives and the guiding role it has played both in the teaching and learning process.However,due to a lack of systematic understanding of objectives,the English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2011 version)the newly-issued National English Curriculum Standards for Senior High Schools(2017 version)and the core competences of the English subject,the instructional objectives that those participants have designed for their reading classes are found tobe incomplete,unclear and unmeasurable,the classroom activities they have designed are separated from the instructional objectives set earlier for the class.In addition,they have ignored the importance of sharing learning objectives and conducting formative assessment and reflection.As a result,both the attainment of instructional objectives and the effectiveness of reading teaching have been greatly impaired.Given the problems found in the previous four stages,the author has proposed a model for the implementation of objective-oriented English reading teaching while offering a specific teaching design and a further analysis.In the end,the author also points out that if the effectiveness of the objective-oriented English reading teaching is to be facilitated,relevant departments should first of all pay more attention to this particular issue and provide systematic trainings for the teachers.Meanwhile,English teachers of their own accord ought to respond positively to the problems they have encountered during their implementation of objective-oriented reading teaching,strengthen their systematic understanding of instructional objectives,and try to enhance their professional abilities and make progress alongside with the curriculum reform for the sake of developing their students’ core competences of the English subject.