Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Higher vocational education has witnessed a rapid development since the 1990s,and it plays an increasingly important role in enhancing the quality of education inChina. The training goal of higher vocational education is to educate applied talentson production, technology, service, management and other aspects. English education,as an important part in higher vocational education, mainly focuses on listening,speaking, reading, writing, translation and other comprehensive skills, and highlightsstudents' comprehensive ability to use language to communicate. However, it’sdifficult to translate the goal into reality, because of the traditional "crammingeducation" which has deprived the right and the opportunity of students to practice thelanguage and has greatly hindered the formation and development of students'language skills.Reading, as a major language input, plays a great role among the four basic skillsof listening, speaking, and reading and writing, meanwhile, teaching of reading is alsoplaced in an important position in our public English education. The purpose ofteaching reading is not only to teach students how to accurately understand themeaning of the text material, but also focuses on basic English reading skills andhelps students to develop good reading habits and a scientific learning, and to useappropriate learning strategies to learn one language so as to improve students' abilityto learn language independently via effective teaching activities. Therefore, teachingof public English reading must be engaged in improving the initiative and creativityof students and regard the students as the center, and this is the only way to improvestudents' reading ability and comprehensive ability on language learning.
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1.2 Research Questions and Methods
Students in vocational colleges from across the country, due to the impact ofteaching conditions, teaching environment, teaching ideas , students' English level isuneven, and general basic level is very poor. Meanwhile, due to the awareness of theimportance of English is not enough, many students even think earning English isuseless, so reluctant to learn English. In addition, students lack enthusiasm for activelearning, most students never take the initiative to learn English, do not previewbefore class, do not make class notes, do not speak, no after-school review, too lazyto remember words and read the text, This study psychology and attitude make thestudents' English grades getting worse.
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Chapter 2 literature Review
2.1 Interactive Teaching Theories
Constructivism holds that studying is not about one-way information input, butinteractive learning based prior experience. The information input is necessary forlearners, but the information itself can not help learners with theirknowledge-construction which is an active process based on knowledge andexperience learnt and accumulated by them. The knowledge-construction includes thenew-information-construction and the restructuring of the original experience.Constructivism theory claims that learning is an active process of constructionthrough cooperation in social situations. It considers “situation”, “cooperation”,“conversation” and “significance-making” as four factors of a learning environment,among which the significance-making is the ultimate goal. Learners play an activerole in learning and the teacher acts as a helper, a guide and a facilitator in the processof significance-making. Constructivism also holds that isolated learning is notfavorable for the growth of knowledge and ability but cooperative learning is.The main idea of constructivism in terms of teaching: (1) Organizing the contentof courses with students as the center; (2) Teaching in real situations is emphasized; (3)Cooperative learning is stressed; (4) Sufficient resources should be provided.
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2.2 Reading Theories
Reading is a basic skill in English learning behavior. Reading is an active processduring which meaning-construction is built between readers and reading materials.Before reading, students can activate their prior experiences to predict the content ofthe article. During the reading, the learners can construct the key points of the readingmaterial: after the reading activities students can raise the questions to verify howmuch they know about the reading content. For the part they can not recall, studentscan go back to the reading materials to look for the answer. There are many different definitions of reading. Goodman considers reading as apsycholinguistic guessing game, which is the interaction of thought and language.”Flesch believes that reading is about extracting meaning from a series of letters. Grabebelieves that reading is much more than obtaining meaning of reading materials.What’s more, it can activate prior knowledge and the related knowledge andexperience can be expanded continuously by the information provided by texts andarticles.One point in common in all kinds of definitions is that reading is not a passiveprocess, but a active and flowing course, in which meaning construction is builtbetween readers and reading materials. The core of reading is not to learn words, butto grasp the meaning of the passage. The meaning of passages does not exist on thepressed materials, nor do they merely live in readers’ mind. Reading is to combing thewords of the pressed materials with readers’ existing background knowledge and lifeexperience.
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Chapter 3 Research Design.....28
3.1 Experimental Hypotheses........28
3.2 Subjects .........28
3.3 Instruments......28
3.3.1 Questionnaires........28
3.3.2 Classroom observation.....29
3.4 The procedure of the Experiment......30
3.5 A sample lesson plan.....37
Chapter 4 Data Collection and Analysis.... 43
4.1 Analysis of the Student’s Questionnaires for positive affective attitude.......43
4.2 Analysis of the Classroom observation for fostering reading ability.......53
Chapter 5 Findings and Discussions ...... ...56
5.1 Findings ....56
5.2 Discussions.....57
Chapter 5 Findings and Discussions
5.1 Findings
The analysis of students’ academic records and the results of the survey wellconfirmed my assumption that the interactive approach in public English teaching athigher vocational colleges will doubtlessly help enrich students’ language knowledge,improve their language applied ability and cooperative ability as well as form apositive affective attitude, in which way students may comprehensively develop theirEnglish ability in English reading classes. The reasons for that I found are as follows: the interactive approach in public English teaching at higher vocational collegescan generate more opportunities for students to participate in teaching activities sothat they can have reading classes more interactively. Once they are a part of theteaching activities, the former mode of “sitting quietly and listening” is changed andthey can attain knowledge and develop reading ability in interactions.
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Conclusion
This research, in line with the teaching requirements of public English at highervocational colleges, integrating the characteristics of public English reading teachingin higher vocational colleges, has built a interactive model of public English teachingat higher vocational schools, with the direction of the constructionist theory andSecond Language Acquisition Theory. This model is a breakthrough single mode of“give and accepting” of the traditional English teaching, placing students at the centerand the enhancing the interaction between the teacher and students and the among thestudents consciously, so as to fully deploy students’ subjective initiatives to help themhelp enrich students’ language knowledge, improve their language applied ability andcooperative ability as well as form a positive affective attitude, in which way studentsmay comprehensively develop their English ability in English reading classes andfinally cultivate them into high-quality applied talents to meet the demand of society.The teaching practice has proved this model feasible, since the feedback ofstudents is positive and the data of teaching experiments also provides evidence thatthis model can better help enrich students’ language knowledge, improve theirlanguage applied ability and cooperative ability as well as form a positive affectiveattitude, in which way students may comprehensively develop their English ability inEnglish reading classes than traditional teaching models. Therefore this is a vigorousteaching model which is worth trying and popularizing in the teaching practice toaccelerate English reading teaching reform. There are certainly some limits andshortages in the research of this new model, I will try to enlarge the research scale andlengthen the research cycle with all aspects comprehensively considered adoptingvarious measuring methods to further explore and perfect the application of theinteractive approach in public English teaching at higher vocational colleges.
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