Research On Teaching Strategies Of Reading Class In Middle Schools From The Perspective Of Post Method

Researchers have engaged themselves in the exploration of perfect teaching method since the end of the 19 th century.However,a universal teaching method suitable for all teaching contexts has never appeared.With the proposition of post method pedagogy(Kumaravadivelu,1994,2001,2003,2006),more and more scholars have gradually realized that there is no optimal teaching method in the history,present or future.As Professor Wang(2015)says,the research for foreign language teaching has already marched to post method era.Foreign language teaching in post method era is the inheritance and development of language teaching in method era.Kumaravadivelu‘s post method pedagogy,as the most crucial theory in post method era,is built on three pedagogic parameters and ten macro strategies,and there are millions of micro strategies involved.Based on ten macro strategies proposed by Professor Kumaravadivelu,this paper conducts a qualitative and quantitative investigation of teaching strategies of reading class in middle schools.There are two reasons to combine teaching strategies with reading class: for one,according to the New English Curriculum Standards in 2011(Ministry of Education,2012),seven of all the eight recommendations for teaching implementation are in great consistency with ten macro strategies.For the other,reading teaching in middle schools occupies an important position.As an effective input,it helps learners improve their ability to receive,understand and process information.In order to investigate and explore the application for teaching strategies of reading class in middle schools,the author proposes two research questions: What is the status quo of teachers‘ use of teaching strategies in reading class from the post method perspective? What are problems with teachers‘ use of teaching strategies in the perspective of post method? And three research instruments such as questionnaire,classroom observation,and semi-structured interview are adopted in this study so as to get comprehensive information on these two questions.Research participants are 50 teachers and 207 students selected from five schools in Xi‘an,and they are dotted in Grade 7,Grade 8 and Grade 9.Further,the author adapts the questionnaire designed by Mr.Zhou(2008)and macro-strategies/mismatch observational scheme introduced by Tao(2013)to discuss and analyze data from four aspects in terms of teaching interaction,teaching methods,teaching objective and teaching content.The following findings are presented: the status quo of teachers‘ use of teaching strategies is not optimistic enough.To be specific,teachers in middle schools have awareness about ten macro strategies,but the awareness about teaching content still needs to be strengthened;in practice field,teachers have the tendency to pay more attention to teaching interaction and teaching technique rather than teaching objective and teaching content.Also,several problems in the process of teachers‘ use of teaching strategies are summarized in the paper.For example,teachers‘ awareness about macro strategies is not clear enough;teachers‘ application in practice is not efficient;teachers‘ reflection ability is not strong;and teachers‘ autonomy needs to be improved.This research aims at providing profound thinking towards reading teaching in middle schools so as to improve teaching efficiency.Furthermore,the research serves as a modest spur from the perspective of post method to induce future researches to make more valuable contributions.