An Investigation On Senior High School English Teachers’ Design Of Pre-reading Activities And Its Influential Factors

New National English Curriculum Standards(2017)states clearly that"teachers should design comprehensive,associative and practical English learning activities." In senior high school English teaching,reading holds a crucial position in language acquisition.At present,the reading course can be divided into three stages:pre-reading,while-reading and post-reading.As the first step of the reading course,efficient pre-reading activities can stimulate students’ interest in reading,activate their background knowledge and improve their reading comprehension.In the current researches on pre-reading activities,scholars mainly discuss the forms of pre-reading activities or the impact of pre-reading activities on students.However,teachers,as the dominant role in the classroom,are the research subjects that cannot be ignored.In response to the factors above,this research aims to explore the teaching design of pre-reading activities by senior high school English teachers and its influential factors,with schema theory and constructivism as the theorical framework,with classroom observation,questionnaires and interview as the research instruments,with 211 students and 5 English teachers in an ordinary senior high school in Beijing as the research participants for a semester(from October 2019 to January 2020),trying to study the following three aspects:first,the current situation of pre-reading in senior high school English reading lessons;then,senior high school English teachers’teaching design of pre-reading activities and its influential factors;finally,the obstacles of pre-reading in senior high school English reading lessons.Based on investigation and research,the author finds that:first,commonly used pre-reading activities are asking questions and conducting group discussions,teaching vocabulary,and providing background information;the least used pre-reading activities is about the activation of the students’ formal schema.Second,teachers would spend an average of 6 minutes and 13 seconds per lesson on pre-reading activities,with an average of only 1 minute and 48 seconds on teacher-student interaction.Third,according to the interview with teachers,programmatic documents,teaching materials,students’ affective factors and teachers themselves will influence the teachers’ teaching design of the pre-reading activities.Among these factors,teachers mentioned students most.Furthermore,there are some difficulties in the preparation stage and the implementation stage of the pre-reading activities.For example,how to design some interesting pre-reading activities and improve students’participation.On the basis of this research,the researcher puts forward some specific suggestions which is improving teachers’awareness and encouraging English teachers to design more pre-reading activities that can activate students’ formal schema,reasonably controlling the time of pre-reading activities,promoting teaching design and giving theoretical support,aiming at providing senior high school English teachers with reference to their teaching designs.