Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of the study
English is a basic and compulsory subject in junior high schools in China, and ifwe consider English as a foreign language all over the world, reading is one of the mostimportant reasons why students learn the language. “For many students, reading is byfar the most important of the four skills in a second language, particularly in English asa second or foreign language” (Carrel, 1987:1) .However, reading in middle schools isstill going on in a lower level. The students often complain that they spend lots of timeand efforts in reading but benefit little from it, which discourages them a lot. Whilereading, the students often meet many difficulties. Although they struggle to get rid ofthe trouble, they still harvest little from their efforts.Many Chinese English teachers usually adopt the traditional teaching modelwhich is based on grammar-translation method in English reading classes. Thegrammar-translation approach is characterized by teacher-centered instruction andgrammar teaching, it views sentences as the basic element of a language which consistof a series of describable rules. Readers should master these rules and know largeenough vocabulary so that they can translate accurately and quickly from their mothertongue to foreign language and vice versa. This model has many disadvantages: learnerscannot understand the text as a whole. They only focus on the study of words andsentences in isolation but not their function and meaning in the text, and they only wantto know the words and the use of language; besides, reading strategies are also neglected. While in the English reading classes, students often read a text intensivelyalong with the teacher; whenever they encounter a new word, they will look it up in thedictionary. They want to know all the details in the text and neglect the main ideas in thetext. They don’t know there are several strategies and certain theories that can assisttheir reading comprehension.From the above reasons, it shows that traditional teaching approach is noteffective and appropriate for English reading teaching. Students who are trained underthose traditional methods get a poor achievement in reading comprehension. So certainreform should be implemented.
英语是一门基本的必修科目，在初中学校，在中国，如果我们考虑世界各地的英语作为一门外语，阅读是最为重要的原因，学生学习的语言之一。“关于许多学生来说，英语论文，阅读是迄今为止在第二语言的四个技能中最重要的，尤其是在英语作为第二语言或外语”（卡雷尔1987:1），然而，英语毕业论文，读中学还在进行中较低的水平。学生们经常抱怨，他们花费大量的时间和努力，在阅读，但受益不大，这阻碍了他们很多。一边读书，学生们经常会遇到很多困难。虽然他们难以摆脱的麻烦，他们仍然从他们的努力收获甚微。许多中国的英语老师通常采取传统的教学模式，这是基于语法翻译法在英语阅读课。教师为中心的教学和语法教学语法翻译法的特点是，它认为句子为基本元素的一种语言，它包括了一系列的描述的规则。读者应该掌握这些规则，并知道词汇量不够大，使他们能够准确，快速地翻译外国语言，反之亦然从他们的母亲的话语。这种模式也有很多缺点：学习者无法理解的文字作为一个整体。他们只专注于探讨孤立的单词和句子，但不是他们的影响和意义在文本，他们只是要知道的话，语言的使用，而且也被忽视，阅读策略。虽然在英语阅读课，学生经常阅读文本集中跟着老师，每当他们遇到了一个新词，他们会看它在字典中。
1.2 Purpose of the study
In the traditional teaching English reading class in junior high school, the teachingand learning activities are centered on the recognition process of letters, words andgreater units of language. In class, the teachers keep talking while the students are busytaking notes. The new “syllabus for junior English” was promulgated by China’sDepartment of Education, in which learner’s language level are graded according todifferent demands. The syllabus stipulates clearly that our teaching aim is “to train thestudents to have a higher level of comprehension in reading…” (Wang Zhiguo, 2017).Reading plays a domin
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