An Action Research On The Skill Of “Viewing” In Middle School English Teaching

With the increasing advancement of technology,information sources are becoming more and more abundant.The understanding and communication of information has shifted from single symbols of text to multi-modal symbols such as pictures,videos and audio,and the way of training talents has also changed to the direction of diversified and critical thinking talents.In order to meet the needs of the times,the Senior High School English Curriculum Standard(2017 Edition)clearly states for the first time that “language ability refers to the ability to understand and express meaning in social contexts by listening,speaking,reading,viewing,and writing”.The inclusion of “viewing”in language ability adds a contemporary dimension to English language ability.As a result,“viewing” will become an essential part of English language teaching and learning,and it will be crucial for students to improve their comprehension and expression skills.In this study,English teachers in two middle schools in Xi’an,Shaanxi Province,were selected as the research subjects,and adopted the method of questionnaire survey,classroom observation and interview to investigate the current situation of the cultivation of viewing skills in junior middle school English teaching.It attempted to explore the following two research questions :(1)How do teachers define viewing skills?(2)How do teachers implement viewing skills in teaching? The findings are as follows :(1)Teachers do not have a clear understanding of the concept of viewing skills.Although teachers have a positive attitude towards the cultivation of viewing skills,some of them believe that there will be more difficulties in the training process at the present stage.(2)As for the cultivation of viewing skills,the overall cultivation frequency is low,and the level of viewing skills at different levels varies,while the cultivation frequency of recognition and comprehension skills is relatively high.The cultivation of various skills has limitations and there is still much room for improvement.Because “viewing” is a new language skill that is still in its infancy,this paper also puts forward the problems of viewing skills in real classroom teaching.Of course,due to the constraints of time and conditions,there are still shortcomings in this study,such as the small sample size of the respondents;the questionnaire may not be a comprehensive measure of teachers’ cultivation of viewing skills.However,this study has achieved the expected goal and the results are satisfactory in general,which can provide a reference for the cultivation of viewing skills of current junior middle school English teachers,and also contribute to theoretical and empirical research in this field.