| Reading is an important way to acquire information and master knowledge,and it is also the basis for the development of other language skills.In order to cultivate four core competencies,six components of English curriculum content are proposed in General Senior High School English Curriculum Standards(2017).As one of these six components,text types are mentioned for the first time.With an aim to guide students to be exposed to and learn different types of discourse,to become familiar with common discourse forms,and to grasp the basic structure,language style,and expressions of different discourses,the standards require teachers to guide students to observe and analyze the structure and linguistic features of discourse.However,the reading comprehension process is characterized by too much emphasis on the “micro” perspective in current English teaching.In this situation,students have insufficient mastery of the structure of a text and the content,making it difficult for them to flexibly apply appropriate reading strategies in reading and develop their reading comprehension ability.The philosophy behind the genre-based approach is in congruence with the requirements of the Standards,therefore,this study attempts to apply the genre-based approach in high school English reading to explore the influence on students’ English reading comprehension ability and reading strategies.This study is an applied research based on genre-based approach guided by genre analysis theory,constructivism and schema theory,aiming to answer the following research questions:(1)Can the genre-based approach effectively improve students’ reading comprehension abilities? If so,which specific dimensions of the ability have been improved?(2)How can the genre-based approach influence students’ use of reading strategies?(3)To what extent will the application of genre-based approach enhance students’ genre awareness?Based on the previous research,this study tries to build up a genre-based teaching model suitable for high school English reading teaching.The genre-based model can be divided into five specific stages.(1)Context-setting.This stage focuses on guiding students to understand the communicative purpose of the text through questioning and elaboration.(2)Model analysis.In this stage,students work in groups to analyze the structure of the text from the macro perspective and continue to explore linguistic features from the micro perspective through a series of activities.(3)Independent analysis.In this stage,the teacher gives students a text in the same genre and uses the question sheet as a guide for them to analyze the genre independently.(4)Evaluation and feedback.Students share the results of their independent analysis and genre analysis in small groups and complete a self-feedback form for class evaluation.(5)Consolidation and reflection.Students reflect according to the self-reflection checklist after doing the reading exercises,integrating the class teaching steps with assignments.In this study,104 students from two classes in senior one of a high school in Guiyang were selected as research subjects for a 12-week teaching experiment in which the experimental class adopted genre-based approach while the control class the traditional“bottom-up” teaching model.By conducting reading comprehension tests,questionnaires and interviews,the following conclusions were drawn:1.The reading scores of the experimental class improve significantly compared to the control class,which indicates that the application of genre-based approach can effectively improve students’ reading comprehension ability,specifically the ability to grasp the main idea,to infer from the texts,and to deduce meaning of unfamiliar words.2.Students in experimental class change their usage of reading strategies,mainly in terms of reading cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies.3.Under the genre-based reading instruction,students are able to form genre awareness in and after reading classes,developing good habits of genre analysis in English learning.At last,some suggestions are made for the application of genre-based approach in reading,and some references are provided for future research. |
