An Application Of "PAD Class" To English Reading Teaching In Junior High Schools

According to the requirements of The National English Curriculum for Compulsory Education(2011 Edition),junior high school students should understand the meanings of new words by context and word formation,clarify the logical relationship between sentences,make clear the main idea of the article,understand the storyline,and apply corresponding reading strategies on the basis of different reading purposes.However,at present,many problems need to be solved in English teaching of junior high schools.The problems are mainly divided into two aspects which are reading motivation and reading ability.From the perspective of reading motivation,students lack subjective initiative and they are not interested in reading.From the perspective of reading ability,students do not understand the general meaning,and misunderstand the detailed information.And their reading logic thinking is poor.In order to solve the existing problems,Professor Zhang Xuexin from Fudan University put forward “Presentation-Assimilation-Discussion Class”(PAD Class).This pattern combines the advantages of traditional and discussion classes.It includes three parts: presentation,assimilation and discussion.This study attempted to apply the “PAD Class” to English reading teaching in junior high schools,aiming at enhancing students' English reading motivation and improving their reading ability.In this study,two parallel classes were selected from Grade 3 in Daixi Middle School,Zouping City,Shandong Province.Class 3 was the experimental class,and Class 4 was the control class.The two classes were taught by the same English teacher.The study conducted a four-month teaching experiment.The experimental class adopted the “PAD Class” for reading teaching,while the control class adopted the traditional reading teaching pattern.The research methods of this study were questionnaires,tests,interviews and SPSS23.0 system was used to analyze the data of the experiment.The research questions in this study are as follows:1.What is the impact of “PAD Class” on students' English reading motivation?2.What is the impact of “PAD Class” on students' English reading comprehension ability?The research shows that the assimilation before discussion in PAD Class relieves students' reading anxiety,increases their interest in reading,and enhances their learning motivation.Moreover,students have chances to learn and think independently,so they can deepen their reading comprehension,and further improve their reading ability.