Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
In recent years, most of our junior schools are implementing teaching in large classes.By the influence of traditional teaching model, teachers always developing the same teachingobjectives when they prepare the lessons, and implementing the teaching methods and modethe same way in treating the whole class, ignoring that teaching would take different effectson the students. The reason, which is quite obvious, is that the teachers easily neglect thedifferences about the individual learning interest, motivation and objective, pay less attentionto their differences of learning habits, learning style, intelligence level and receptivity.Students easily fall into differentiated polarization during the learning process if the teachingmode goes without any improvements. The issue of how to help the students to build upconfidences to learn English well, narrow the differentiation, upgrade the whole class hasbecome increasingly important to every junior English teacher.Differentiated Instruction, defined that the teachers focus on the students’ commondevelopment, and meanwhile concern about the individual difference, is a teaching principlewhich sprang in 1980s. The intent of differentiating instruction is to maximize each student’sgrowth and individual success by meeting each student where he or she is, and assisting in thelearning process (Hua, 2007). To combine commonalities and individualities organically forpromoting each student’s growth and teaching effects to the maximum is exactly whatteachers need to do. With the accelerating pace of the society, in the age of informationexplosion, reading is one of the basic ways to obtain knowledge efficiently. In thefundamental education area, English reading is a basic and important skill to the juniorstudents. In recent years, take Liaoning province as an example, in the high school entranceexamination, in addition to the reading comprehension, it added the parts of comprehensivereading and reading expression.
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1.2 Research Significance
First of all, this research is aim to help the English teachers in middle schools who areinterested in the practical applications of differentiated instruction and task-based approach inEnglish teaching. As mentioned above, numerous practical and theoretical researches havebeen conducted on both differentiated instruction and task-based approach in the basiceducation. And recently, increasing amount of teachers and researchers has been carrying onresearches about its application in middle schools. So the present research I conducted iscarried out on time and it can fill the research gap to some extent, and hope my research canbring about some enlightenments and references to the frontline teachers.Secondly, the teaching mode in this experiment takes the advantages of both thedifferentiated instruction and the task-based approach to solve the problems of differentiatedinstruction and the difficulties of task-based approach in the previous researches in middleschool. Some researches about differentiated instruction are tend to dividing students intospeed class and slow class in one grade, it proved that it is hard for teachers to carry out theinstruction, students feel difficult to get involved in the English learning, especially for thepoor students. Another way of differentiated instruction was conducted by dividing studentsinto different level in one class, students of different levels in a group to finish the tasks whichthe teacher assigned. In the fact, tasks can be finished easily by the high-level students, but itseems too difficult to the poor students, and the poor students will lose their interests inlearning. In this research, different task will designed by teachers according to the basis ofstudents for different levels in the same class. The tasks and activities of different levels willbe correlated in content and have continuity in difficulty. Different levels of students caneasily to get involved in the English learning. In this research, a new approach is expected tobe developed and applied in the practical teaching. It will give some inspirations andreferences for the future researches.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Differentiated Instruction
Differentiated instruction is matching instruction to meet the different needs of learnersin a given classroom. The instructional need within a whole classroom is large. The premiseof differentiated instruction is that learning experiences need to be designed and adapted tomeet students’ individual, and varied needs in order to facilitated student success (San-tangelo& Tomlinson, 2009). In other words, teachers need to be “flexible in their approach toteaching and adjust the curriculum and presentation of information to learners, rather thanexpecting students to modify themselves for the curriculum” (Hall, Strangeman, & Meyer,2003). Tomlinson stated the differentiation needs an “alternate approach of instructionalplanning” (1999). Lawrence Brown defined the differentiated instruction as a “multiple lessonplanning system” (2004).Differentiated instruction has expanded in both breadth and depth during the past fewdecades and is now recognized as an effective way for elementary level and secondary-levelteachers to meet all students’ diverse needs (Lawrence-Brown, 2004; Olenchak, 2001; Piggott,2002; Strange-man, Hall, & Meyer, 2003; Tomlinson, Brimijoin & Narvaez, 2008). Moreover,foundations of differentiated instruction include such strategy created instruction planning ascurriculum compacting, flexible grouping, tiered activities, and student contracts (Brimijoin,2005; Tomlinson, 2001). The purpose for differentiating teaching and practice is to increasethe quality and quantity of reading instruction to ensure effective support teaching andlearning occurs in classroom. The premise of Tomlinson’s model is that teachers can promoteexcellence by differentiating content, process, and product based on understandings ofstudents’ readiness, levels, interests and learning profiles. The readiness is shaped by students’life experiences and prior learning, and the goal of differentiated readiness is to ensure theentire students can received appropriately challenging learning experiences (Vygotsky, 1978).
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2.2 Theoretical Basis of the Differentiated Instruction in Junior Middle School
Learning theory of Constructivism is one of important learning theories in education.Constructivism arising from the children cognitive development theory, mainly because ofindividual’s cognitive development is closely associated with the learning process. Therefore,it can be relatively appropriate way to reveal the cognitive rules of students learning process,and illustrated that how learning happened, how to construct the meaning, how to form theconcept, also what are the main factors should included in the ideal learning environment. Sounder the guidance of the constructivism theory, it is hopeful to develop a set of effectivecognitive learning theories and ideal constructivism learning environment.Constructivism thinks that knowledge can be gain by the learners make use of thenecessary learning materials under the assistances of learning partners or teachers in the wayof meaning construction rather than teaching by teachers. As a result of learning is a meaningconstruction process with interpersonal collaboration activities in a certain culturalbackground. Thus, constructivism learning theory thinks that “context” “cooperation”“conversation” and “meaning construction” as the four elementals in learning environment.
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Chapter Three Research Design..... 19
3.1 Experimental Objectives....... 19
3.2 Research Questions ......... 19
3.3 Subjects .... 19
3.4 Instruments .... 20
3.5 Procedures...... 21
3.6 Data Collection .... 23
3.6.1 Data of the Questionnaires ..... 23
3.6.2 Data of the Interviews ....... 24
Chapter Four Results and Discussion......... 25
4.1 Effects of Differentiated Instruction in the Task-based Classroom... 25
4.2 Students’ Interest toward English Learning and Teaching before..... 29
Chapter Five Conclusion.... 36
5.1 Major Findings .... 36
5.2 Implication ..... 37
5.3 Limitations and Further Study ........ 37
5.4 Suggestions..... 38
Chapter Four Results and Discussion
4.1 Effects of Differentiated Instruction in the Task-based Classroom and Traditional Teaching Mode on Students’ Reading Proficiency
Two tests which conclude a pretest and a posttest were carried out in the experiment,which were both in a way of written test. The pretest was carried out in the both of the controlclass and the experimental class at the same time; the results of the reading tests in the pre-testare shown in the Table 4.1: In Table 4.1, the mean score of the experimental class is 0.279 points lower than themean score of the control class. The average difference of the mean score is very small and itdemonstrated that the experimental class (73.032) and the control class (73.311) are similar.The difference of standard deviation between the experimental class and the control class(0.4564) is negligible. The p value is .914 at the .05 level was verified through theindependent sample t-test. It indicates that the experimental class and the control class instudents’ English reading proficiency show no significant difference before the experiment.
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Conclusion
The aim of English reading teaching of junior middle school is that teach the essentialknowledge to students, and make students can read independently with a small amount of newwords and get pleasures from reading. With the regards to the current situation in teaching andlearning, English teachers are required to adopt new concepts and instructions of teaching andapply teaching theoretical knowledge to the practice. Differentiated Instruction is an appliedwidely in all over the world, but the application of specific skills in some subjects is less andnot all-inclusive. In order to investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of differentiatedinstruction based on task-based reading classroom in the junior middle school. This thesis isemphasis on that the application of differentiated instruction based on task-based classroom inEnglish reading teaching and it is hoped to find an effective way to improve the Englishreading proficiencies of junior middle school students.#p#分页标题#e#
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Reference (omitted)
