The Application Of Whole Language Approach To English Reading Teaching In Junior High School

As one of the main parts of English,reading plays a significant role in English teaching.English reading can not only improve learners’ generalization abilities,but also help them improve their logical thinking and cultural awareness.However,there are many problems in the current English reading class of junior high school,for example,students read slowly,and they don’t know how to summarize the main idea of the article.In view of the problems in the current English reading class,a new teaching method,namely Whole Language Approach,should be adopted to solve these problems.Whole Language Approach is a set of educational philosophy about language,language learning,language teaching,course content and community learning.It puts forward the simultaneous development of language skills and advocates that language is taught as a whole.In the process of the study,the author hopes to find answers of the following questions.(1)What influence does Whole Language Approach have on students’ English reading speed?(2)What influence does Whole Language Approach have on students’ generalization abilities in English reading?The experimental study is carried out by the author.For the sake of conducting this experiment,the subjects of this study are selected from the second grade of junior middle school students(class 3 and class 4)from Xiaohe middle school in Xun County.Among them,the class 3 is the experimental class,which adopts Whole Language Approach in English reading teaching.The class 4 is the control class,adopting the traditional teaching method in English reading teaching.The author uses SPSS17.0 software to analyze the score changes of students in the pre-test and post-test papers,and finally interviews nine students randomly selected in the experimental class,and made a summary analysis.By the analysis of experimental data and students’ feedback,the following conclusions are drawn.First,Whole Language Approach can improve students’ reading speed,helping improve their enthusiasm and initiative.Second,Whole Language Approach can improve students’ passagesummarizing ability,increasing students’ self-confidence in learning English.The research shows that Whole Language Approach can effectively improve the students’ English reading ability,and has a positive effect on the English reading teaching in junior high school.This paper has six chapters.The first chapter is mainly composed of background of the research,significance of the research,research questions,research methods and the structure of the thesis.The second chapter is literature review of Whole Language Approach,mainly including the researches on Whole Language Approach in English teaching abroad and at home.The third chapter is concerned with the theoretical foundation of Whole Language Approach,including constructivism and humanism.In addition,the author also introduces the definition,general principles and evaluation of Whole Language Approach.The fourth chapter is about research design.This part includes five aspects,namely research hypotheses,research subjects,research instruments,research procedure and a sample of Whole Language Approach in EC.The fifth chapter is data analysis and discussion.It mainly includes the analysis of data and research results.The sixth chapter mainly includes the main findings,pedagogical implications and limitations of this study.