Chapter1 Introduction
1.1 The background of the research
English has been an international language in modern society, and it is used widely inmany fields of our study, work as well as life. And the process of reading is the cognitiveprocess of language. Reading helps people consolidate and expand vocabulary, enrich ourknowledge, improve the abilities of using language. Reading can train our thinking ability,understanding ability, generalization ability and judging ability. It is the basic way of trainingstudents to understand and use English skills. As a result, both teachers and parents pay muchattention to reading learning because it has become one of the most important subjects inmiddle schools. But many students often fail in reading. They could not read effectively.In 2001, the ministry of education of China enacted the English Curriculum Standard,which requires that the descriptions of reading skills among the five goals after graduationfrom middle school are the followings:1. To be able to understand the meaning of new words according to the context and wordformation inference between sentences in paragraphs;3. To be able to find out the topic in the article, understand the plot of the story, to predict thedevelopment of the plot as well as the likely result.4. To be able to understand reading materials of common types.5. To be able to use simple reading strategies to obtain information according to differentreading purposes.6. To be able to study with the help of dictionaries and other reference books.In a word, in order to learn well, we should make reading promote studying.
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1.2 The significance of the research
The stride of discovering and implementing new methods in English reading never stopsand the gains are fruitful. But there are fewer applications of improving underachievers’reading ability in rural middle schools. Thus, students are still confused when doing reading.Considering the significance of reading, and the difficulty existing in reading teaching andlearning, we decide to take out this research. Based on the input hypothesis theory and theconstructivism learning theory, the author manages to use the task-based language teachingapproach in the reading teaching.At the same time, the author aims to find out the causes of low underachievers’ readingability in rural middle school by the experiment, and then we can find effective ways toimprove underachievers’ reading ability in No.13 Middle School of Pulandian. So the authorwants to answer the two research questions which will be shown in the next part.
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Chapter2 Literature Reviews
2.1 Underachievers
It is known that scholars in China thinks the definition of underachievers includes broadand narrow ones．In its broad term，underachievers refer to the students who has poorperformances because of the reasons of intellectual level，physical quality，psychologicalbarriers and unsuitable learning methods，etc．But in the narrow one，underachievers arestudents who are intellectually normal and Can not meet the requirement of teachingobjective(Du Zhiqiang，2002)．Qian Zaisen (1994) also thinks underachievers are those whoCan not achieve the standard requirement of the teaching syllabus．The most obvious featureof underachievers is that their academic grades Can not reach the standard requirement of theteaching syllabus，even though they are normal in physical growth．In this paper，theunderachievers refer to the students who usually cannot meet the demands of Englishcurriculum，usually not being able to pass the examinations(his or her usually scores arebelow 90 when the full mark is 150).English underachievers refer to the underachievers who have difficulty in learningEnglish. They have no sensory disorder, and hey all want to be cared for, to be loved andrespected. But it is difficult for them in learning habits, methods, abilities, basic knowledge,and psychological quality and so on. Their intelligence and abilities of listening, speaking,reading and writing could not be fully developed. Their knowledge aim and ability aim fail atthe requirement of English Curriculum Standard. They lose the confidence of learning Englishbecause of the prejudice of teachers or personal reasons. Gradually, they would abasethemselves. And their main features are that they get poor grades in English, do not have goodhabits of study, lack of scientific learning strategies. They are the group who have difficultyand fall behind in English for the moment.
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2.2 Current research on reading ability at home
From the middle of 1980s, the scholars at home began to launch their researches onEnglish learning ability. Many outstanding domestic scholars joined in the studying ranks andmade a great contribution to the research though they started the relative researches later. Asthey had a more comprehensive understanding of domestic English learning background, theirresearches have more practical and valuable significance for the language learners at home.Domestic researchers have carried out a great deal of empirical study on university students'English learning abilities and they have made great achievements in studying languagelearning.Wen Qiufang (1995) is acknowledged universally as one of the topping domestic appliedlinguists in the foreign language education research field. She applied the research methods ofqualitative and quantitative analysis in her case analysis study for English majors' learningstrategies. Through the above research, she discovered that the diversity in the application oflearning strategies between successful and unsuccessful learners led to the obviousdifferences in their school achievements.
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Chapter3 The theoretical framework of the research ........ 12
3.1 Constructivism Learning Theory ........ 12
3.2 Input hypothesis theory ..... 12
Chapter4 Research Design .... 15
4.1 Objectives........ 15
4.2 Subjects ..... 15
4.3 Instruments ...... 15
4.4 Experiment procedure ....... 18
4.5 Data collection and discussion ...... 27
4.6 Summary ......... 35
Chapter 5 Conclusion....... 36
5.1 Major findings ....... 36
5.2 limitations........ 38
5.3 Suggestions for future research ..... 38
Chapter4 Research Design
4.1 Objectives
The research has been done in No.13 Middle School in Pulandian so as to investigate theexisting causes of low reading ability of underachievers and the corresponding effectivereading strategy that will help to improve the underachievers’ reading ability in rural middleschool.By the solving of low reading ability, on one hand, students can get a satisfactoryEnglish marks facing with the entrance examination. On the other hand, by reading in theirdaily life, they can improve their English literacy, expand their horizon, and mold theircharacters. The subjects of this paper were 60 underachievers from two parallel classes of GradeOne in Pulandian NO.13 Middle School, Class One and Class Two. They all aged from12-14 with the same level of cognition. There were 57 students in each class, in which thepercentage of girls and boys was nearly the same. These two classes had the same Englishlevel according to their entrance examination mean scores, which made sure that they weresimilar in the beginning. Randomly Class 2 was designated as experimental class (EC), whileClass 1 as controlled class (CC).
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Conclusion
In this part, we will have our conclusion from the previous data collection and analysisas well as major findings, then the limitations of this paper and finally we will put ourresearch to an end. In this paper, based on the pre-questionnaire, post-questionnaire as well as interviews,the teacher has made a conclusion about the causes of low reading ability of underachievers inNo.13 Middle School of Pulandian.For the reasons of students:More than half of underachievers do not have good reading habits. From the data ofquestionnaires, we know that 53% underachievers like heart reading and reading back, andthey neglect the importance of context, and these are bad habits of reading.Meanwhile when asked the sequence of after class-reading, 16% of underachievers thinkthey do reading after class.The underachievers’ attitude towards problems or new words when they do some readingis not correct. During the questionnaire, we know that most underachievers would look updictionaries or ask others; even they will give up reading.
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Reference (omitted)