A Survey Of Senior High School Students’ Viewing In English Learning

The advent of the Internet era has promoted the change of learning methods and the way knowledge spreads.In the contemporary era of internet information under the impetus of the development of science and technology,visual information transformation and acquisition has become the main,which in turn brings new changes to people’s cognitive and learning style.Therefore,viewing ability is important to learning as it combines comprehension and expressiveness in understanding and response,which urgently needs learners to improve so as to achieve more efficient acquisition,screening,understanding,application and innovation of visual information for the purpose of enhancing learning efficiency.In the newly issued English Curriculum Standard for Senior High School(2017 Edition),students’ viewing ability is added to listening,speaking,reading,writing abilities.It emphasizes that attention should be paid to the use of multimodal discourses in English education.Based on some researches on “viewing” and “visual literacy”,the definition of“viewing” in English learning is proposed in this paper,which refers to the ability of perceiving,comprehending and applying visual information such as graphics,tables,animations,symbols and videos in multimodal discourse.This definition combines the definition of “viewing” in the new curriculum standard of senior high school English and reflects the characteristics of the times and English subject.Obviously,to cultivate students’ viewing literacy in English teaching has become a necessary concern of English teachers.However,through the literature review,it is found that most of the research on students’ viewing ability mainly focus on college students,while the survey on the current situation of senior high school students’ viewing ability in English classroom is exceedingly rare.For the purpose of fostering the students’ “viewing” in high school,it is necessary to get to know the current situation of their viewing literacy,their understanding of and attitude to it as well as its affecting factors firstly.Based on the methods of questionnaire,observation and interview,this paper investigates the current situation of 252 senior high school student’ viewing in English learning in a senior high school in Yantai.Three questions are proposed:(1)What is the current situation of viewing of senior high school students in English learning in the aspects of visual perception,visual comprehension,and visual application?(2)How well do the teachers and students understand students’ viewing in English learning and what are their attitudes to it?(3)Do the factors such as differences in gender,grade,English performance,experience in art training and environment influence students’ viewing in English learning?The results show that:(1)The ability of “viewing” in English learning of senior high school students is generally average,and the ability of visual application is relatively weak compared with the ability of visual perception and visual comprehension in the viewing.(2)Teachers and students are not good at understanding the meaning of viewing literacy,and even more than half of the students do not know“viewing”,and most of the teachers do not know the definition of viewing or visual literacy,although they know that this ability is crucial.Moreover,although teachers and students have a positive attitude towards the cultivation of viewing,some teachers admit that there will be more difficulties in the cultivation process at this stage.(3)In addition,the viewing ability in English learning of senior high school students is also affected by gender—girls perform better than boys,but there is no difference between students of different grades;and the ability of “viewing” has no correlation with English achievement,but it has significant correlation with students’ past art training experience.The research also finds that the objective conditions affecting the cultivation of viewing literacy of senior high school students in English learning are within teachers and schools,which need the full cooperation of both sides in order to effectively realize the cultivation of students’ viewing ability.According to the results of the survey,this study puts forward specific strategies to cultivate senior high school students’ viewing or visual literacy in English learning from three aspects including English characteristics,students’ individual differences and the importance of teachers’ role.