前言:我们精心挑选了数篇优质阅读材料论文文章,供您阅读参考。期待这些文章能为您带来启发,助您在写作的道路上更上一层楼。
当前中学生中不少人属“追星族”成员,他们把影星、歌星的名字可以说出一大串,每天嘴上谈的是“星”的趣闻轶事,身上着装模仿的是“星”的装束.但对于科学家,他们却说不出几个名字,对科学家的方方面面,更是一无所知.造成这种现状的原因之一是:电视、电影、杂志、画刊中频频露脸的都是这些影星、歌星,而极少向这些天真的学生介绍科学家.所以他们没有机会了解科学家,科学家的形象在他们心目中树立不起来.
教科书中的“阅读材料”介绍了牛顿、安培、法拉第……等众多科学家的生平和事迹.我把这些材料与教学结合起来对学生进行思想、精神、道德、意志等方面的教育.
例如,当讲电磁感应现象时,介绍法拉第的生平,介绍他勤奋学习,刻苦钻研的精神;介绍他一生对人民做出的伟大贡献.还指出,法拉第取得成功的一个重要因素是他重视实验,他的许多重要发现都是通过实验获得的.如电磁感应现象、电解定律等.法拉第是伟大的物理学家和化学家,又是一个伟大的思想家.他对社会做出了巨大的贡献,受到人们的爱戴和称颂.通过介绍,同学们既了解了法拉第,也从中学到了研究物理问题的基本方法.
在教学中,我还针对有些学生在学习中存在着怕吃苦、不勤奋,又想取得好成绩这种不切实际的想法,有目的地介绍科学家的有关事例.如:爱迪生为找做灯丝的最好材料,先后实验了1600多种材料;法拉第经过十年不懈努力才找到了磁生电的方法;现在看到的欧姆定律公式那么简单,但是欧姆为了研究这个问题,经历了多次失败,花费了十年心血,把数学和物理结合起来,最终才把电学中的三个量U、I、R之间的关系用一个完美的形式表达出来,即I=UR.
学生从科学家的身上理解了“天才不过是百分之一的灵感加上百分之九十九的汗水”这句话的深刻含义.
“阅读材料”有些是以故事形式出现的,风趣生动,很适合初中生年龄及生理特征,学生很喜欢听.每当我介绍科学家后,总有一些学生进一步追问,想知道更多的情况.
学生从科学家身上学到的热爱科学、实事求是、勤奋好学、刻苦钻研的精神,正在成为学生学习的动力,并有力地促进了学生身心健康的发展.
二、利用“阅读材料”学物理史实,受辩证法教育
学生在初中阶段学习物理,大多数教师注重让学生掌握的是教学大纲中规定的物理概念和规律,这使得学生对物理学发展的曲折历史知道得很少.学生不了解所学知识的形成过程,这不利于学生对物理知识的深入了解.教科书在“阅读材料”中对这方面内容做了一些弥补.
如在热学部分,“阅读材料”介绍了历史上对“热的本质的认识过程”.学生学习后知道了历史上对“热”有两种不同的看法:一种把热看成是一种特殊物质,即“热质说”;另一种认为热是物质的某种运动形式.“热质说”这种违背事实的观点,曾一度被人们所承认,后来科学家们通过对一些热现象的细致观察和反复的大量实验,证明了“热”不是一种物质,从而否定了“热质说”,为分子运动论的发展开辟了道路,为能量守恒定律奠定了基础.
把历史上不同学派间的争论展示给学生,可以打破传统的逻辑教学给学生留下的科学发展是直线前进的印象,使学生了解到,科学发展史是一部理论与实践交叉、失败与成功并存的发展史.回顾历史,还可以加深学生对物理概念的进一步了解,同时对学生进行探索、开拓精神方面的教育.
不同内容的历史,可以使学生得到不同方面的教育.例如利用“热机发展史”可以向学生阐述这样一个道理:各种机器的发明,是生产发展的必然产物,先进机械设备的出现推动了工业革命的发展,而工业革命的发展又带动了机器设备的不断改进.社会要前进,科学发展永无止境.物理学史实中包含有深刻的辩证唯物主义原理,在教学中有意识地用辩证唯物主义观点介绍物理学的某段历史,可以使学生潜移默化地领会并接受辨证唯物主义.
三、紧密联系实际,提高各种能力
近年来,初中物理教学经过一系列的改革,教学质量有了明显的提高.但是还存在着许多问题,其中之一就是物理教学在联系生活、联系社会、联系技术等方面做的还不够.造成学生知识面窄,知识学的死,影响了他们分析问题、解决问题的能力,降低了学生学习物理的兴趣.“阅读材料”广泛收集了物理学联系实际的事实.大到世界各国重视的能源问题,小到家用电器;上到无线电波,下到海洋开发;远到日本银行大楼的日光镜,近到常看的电影片.它们在学生面前展现了一幅幅生动的生活画卷,把学生眼中用概念、公式堆积起来的物理变成了活生生的生活,活生生的物理.
在介绍“阅读材料”中的“电冰箱”时,我特意把冰箱里里外外做了仔细的观察,弄清了冰箱各个部分的位置、形状、作用,还查阅了有关资料.课堂上我既结合汽化、液化讲清了冰箱的原理,又给学生讲了使用冰箱时节电的关键是,缩短开机时间,延长停机时间.要做到这一点,平时应注意尽量少开启冰箱门,减少冰箱内外的热交换.还要注意冷凝器的通风和清洁,以保证良好的散热.我在讲“海市蜃楼”时,把光的折射规律结合进去;在讲“不是老天爷显灵,是建筑师的杰作”时,把回声知识融进去.从“阅读材料”中,学生看到了生活中处处有物理,物理就在我们身边.“阅读材料”中讲的物理知识并不深奥,但使学生感到了知识的价值;使学生的知识面得到扩展,激发了学习物理的兴趣;使学生更加热爱生活、热爱科学.越来越多的学生主动参与学校组织的物理实践活动.在学校,老师课堂上做的演示实验,学生总要利用课外时间,三三两两在教室、到办公室重新操作,仔细观察.在家中,学生找日用品作材料,亲自动手做课本上、习题中介绍的小实验.如:把缝衣服的钢针磁化后做成指南针;用铅笔芯做滑动变阻器,观察小灯泡亮度的变化和电阻的关系;利用音乐生日卡上的闪光二极管做单向导电实验;还有制作潜望镜、小天平…….在这些实践活动中,学生发展了思维能力,增强了动手能力和理论联系实际的能力.
问题情境的创设要以课堂为舞台,以思想品德教材及相关材料为载体,突出学生的学习主体地位,营造一种适合学生探究的学习环境,通过学生主动动脑和动手探究,培养学生收集、处理信息的能力,发展他们比较、分析、归纳、综合、评价等探究性思维,最终学会如何学习。
创设问题情境主要应从以下几方面着手:
一、营造民主氛围,张扬个性
教育家陶行知曾指出:“行动是中国教育的开始,创新是中国教育的完成。”可见,学习的最终目的是学会创造,而学生的创新精神存在于学生问题产生的过程中。思想品德教学呼唤“人文性”的回归,学生是人,他们有独立的人格,有灵敏的情感,教师在教学活动中必须善于发现和开发学生的才、情、志、趣,尊重他们的自尊心,调动他们内在的潜能,采取多种形式为学生创造积极主动参与问题情境的机会,启发他们创造性地学习。
1.尊重学生的问题意识,创设民主氛围
21世纪呼唤创造型人才,如何有效地尊重学生的问题意识,发展其创造能力,已成为教育工作者研究的重要课题。尊重学生的问题意识,就是充分相信学生,千方百计地使学生成为问题情境的主人。例如,我在分析“社会主义荣辱观”时,先布置学生认真阅读材料,在此基础上要求学生自己探究质疑。学生提出了:“当今社会提出社会主义荣辱观的现实意义是什么?它与“三个代表”等党的指导思想有何联系?针对社会主义荣辱观,我们青少年该怎么办?”等问题,我鼓励学生围绕各自提出的问题进行学习小组讨论。在讨论中,我有意识地把自己当作学生的一员,参与他们的讨论,从而缩短自己与学生间的心理距离,消除他们在即将进行的课堂交流中可能出现的胆怯、害羞心理,进而在民主、平等、和谐的教学氛围中完成问题情境的创设。可见,我们在思品材料分析中,应尊重学生的问题意识,使学生的主体意识觉醒,引导学生主动参与,使他们的主体性得到充分发挥。
2.鼓励学生的创新意识,张扬学生个性
个性发展教育是落实素质教育的真正体现,它既强调面向全体学生,也强调个体发展的自主性、差异性。个性在心理学上强调个体之间的差异。个性差异是客观存在的,作为创造力开发者的教师,在教育活动中,要创设轻松、自由的问题情境,张扬学生的个性,使学生在接受知识、发现问题的过程中,形成对问题的独特认识和见解。我在分析“小明与父亲唱反调”一段材料时,要求学生针对逆反心理发表看法,一部分学生认为逆反心理具有危害性;但也有少数学生认为,逆反心理未必都错,有的反抗不无道理,学生中的好多道德问题和心理问题是家长有意或无意造成的。在交流讨论的过程中,我淡化了自己是说教者和评判者的角色,尊重和保护学生的创造性答案,用适度的宽容,调动一切手段,为每个学生创造机会,让他们在问题情境的创设中学会动脑、学会创造,让他们感受成功的喜悦,使他们在接受知识和发展智力的过程中,逐步培养出独立、完满的主体人格。
二、激励兴趣,激活教材,强化感受性
居里夫人说:“好奇心是学者的第一美德。”可见,兴趣是学习、科研不断前进的推动力。在思想品德课上,特别是在阅读材料中,要强化主体的感受性,激发学生主动、积极地探索教材,引疑设问,使学生产生自觉学好思品的动力。
1.于深层蕴意处设疑
思品材料中往往蕴藏着极深的含义,教师精心地引领设疑,将会增强学生主观感受性,使他们积极主动地探索材料主旨。如,在“社会主义初级阶段的主要矛盾”材料中,学生都理解了阶级矛盾不再是主要矛盾,我抓住这点巧妙设疑:为什么阶级矛盾不再是主要矛盾?这样一问,学生迅速进入了积极的思维状态,再联系我国进入社会主义的条件,最后得出了经济决定政治的结论。
2.于材料关键处引疑
所谓关键,就是材料的重点,即能表现主题或线索的字词及语句。抓住关键引疑,能充分调动学生的积极性,由点到面,全面透彻地理解课文,牵一发而动全身。我们必须重视抓住关键引疑,教会学生答题。具体方法是:(1)抓住材料中的主体等关键字词。(2)把握材料题中问与问之间的内在联系。例如,材料一:为整顿和规范市场经济秩序,我国先后颁布了消费者权益保护法等法律。后又印发了《公民道德建设实施纲要》,强调要大力加强公民道德建设。材料二:当前,在某些地方,假烟、假药充斥市场,毒大米、毒油害人事件时有发生,虚假广告泛滥,严重扰乱了市场经济秩序。阅读材料,运用所学知识,回答下列问题:①材料一反映了我国实施什么治国方略?②结合材料一,说明应如何解决材料二反映的问题?③面对材料二中的现象,我们中学生应如何做?其中第②问的答案一要注意有哪些主体可以涉及问题的解决,二要结合第①问,从道德、法律角度回答。
3.于新知与旧知的比较中激疑
引导学生把新知与旧知作比较,可用旧知推新知,把新知纳入原有的知识体系中去,不断增长知识信息量。如,学习“我国现阶段的分配制度”时,我要求学生与原始、奴隶、封建、资本主义社会的分配制度作比较,并提出疑问。经过比较,有学生提出:同是分配制度,为什么在五个社会会产生如此大的差异?经过热烈争论之后,学生理解了:产品如何分配是由生产资料归谁所有决定的。经过这样的比较,学生不仅懂得了五个社会的生产关系情况,而且懂得了生产关系中生产资料所有制是基础。这样的问题情境激发了学生探究的浓厚兴趣,强化了他们的主体感受性,诱发了他们学习的主动性。
总之,在阅读思想品德材料教学中,教师精心地创设问题情境,巧妙引疑,一石激起千层浪,才能激发学生的兴趣,学生学习思品的主动性、积极性才会与日俱增,从而收到事半功倍的效果。
参考文献:
[1]车玲仙,费国平.问题教学法在思想品德教学中的运用.思想政治课教学,2006(7).
[Key Word] Reading interesting; reading material; literature reading; young adult literature; adolescence
[摘要] 当前中学所普遍存在的英语文学阅读状况是:学生阅读是为了完成老师布置的任务和应付考试。当阅读满足他们的这些任务后,他们的课外阅读行为就停止。本文针对这种现象作了具体的原因分析,指出在国内大部分中学英语教学中,阅读材料是影响学生进行英语文学阅读的一个重要原因。回顾国外学者在这领域所做的理论和实践研究,提出把青少年文学的特点和中学生所处发展时期的各方面的需求结合加以分析,采用把青少年文学作为课外阅读材料这一教学方法。我们通过一系列的教学活动如课外兴趣小组,课外阅读活动,阅读作业,培养和提高中学生英语学习能力和文学阅读兴趣。作者对为什么以及如何运用青少年文学读物作为新型课外阅读材料以培养学生的兴趣和情感进行初步的讨论, 以此引发更多的讨论。
[关键词] 阅读兴趣;阅读材料;文学阅读;青少年文学;青少年时期
1. Introduction
As a rule, the teaching of reading in senior schools, both public and private, will move in one of two directions: up or down. When effectively taught, the study of reading can be the most exciting event of the adolescent student’s day. Young people can become deeply engrossed in what they read. They can respond with intensity and conviction.
Interests as factors in genuinely productive reading study are slippery elements indeed. Inventories provided to students in an attempt to discover what they prefer in reading materials can be, and often are, faked by the inventory takers. Thus, the discrepancy between what some young people claim they enjoy reading and what they will actually interact with can be a significant one. Furthermore, teachers must be ever mindful of the differences between their interest, taste, and enthusiasms for certain material selections and those of their students.
How about the situation of reading in senior schools in China? Most students are lack of interest and motivations in reading. The purpose of their reading is to pass the exam. As a result, the students do a little reading outside lessons. Why did these problems exsist?
2. Interest in Reading
In leading young people toward increased reading awareness, teachers used to consider the nature and extent of the interest factor on those efforts. Interesting are a two-edged sword. When positive, they can enhance teachers’ efforts to involve their students in the concern with reading materials and do so most significantly. When negative, however, they present a formidable obstacle to meaningful transaction taking place between texts and readers.
2.1The Status of Reading in senior Middle School
This is an accurate picture of the reading programs in many middle and secondary schools that still have students move chronologically through the literature anthology and choose the traditional classics as their outside reading. Most students are simply unable to connect the text with their goals, level of development and experience. Language development affects cognitive development and vice versa students at this age read at a much higher level of ability when they are reading something that matches their developmental interests and goals. Most students cannot read classic literature well [i.e, they cannot have personal involvement with it]. Students think of the literature as something they cannot understand; therefore, they think they are not intelligent inpiduals.
‘‘The result of the survey about the status of reading which were done by John S. Simmons reflected that Middle school and high school students often balk at display of overt enthusiasm for the selections they are asked to read in the class precisely because they are adolescents. To many of them, the fact that a work is on the required list means that it simply cannot be interesting. They will doggedly refrain from any display of enthusiastic or appreciate response despite the teachers ’creative efforts or the actual effect the work has had on them. ‘Boring’ become the operative judgment. In reading that categorical implacable judgment, they retain their cool demeanor, on which they value above all else. When faced with such study they often have melodramatic indifference.’’[1]p(20)
It seems that school have accomplished just the opposite of what they intended to do. They have turned students off from reading rather than made them lifelong readers. Teachers have failed to choose reading materials that enable students to become emotionally and cognitively involved in what they read. If students are asked to read literature that is not consistent with their development tasks, they will not be able to interact fully with that literature. As a result, students who do not interact with the literature are left with leaning only about literature.
“The same problems also exist in most senior schools in China. Students’ purpose of reading is only to finish the work given by teachers or pass exam. When they finish their work, they stopping reading, for they are asked to read the traditional classics that are chosen in order to complete the teaching mission. But the classics are written in a style and with syntax and vocabulary that are often quite foreign to students in senior middle school. So most students think of literature as something that is difficult for them’’.[2] I have talked to some teachers and students in senior middle school. I have found that most students appeal that their reading materials are difficult and not suitable for them. They can understand the meaning well. So they don’t like to read.
2.2 Factors That Affect Interest in Reading
“The key factor to determine reading is choosing suitable reading material to students. Obviously, there will be many students who will turn away from the task of studying literature because of inadequate competence in the necessary reading skill. Metaphoric expressions, for example, abound in all literary works, whether they are fictional, poetic, or dramatic. Such expressions are placed in those works to clarity indeed intensity, the meanings those works. When students are unable to establish precise relationships between metaphors and their referents, however, what was put there to clarity produces confusion instead. It doesn’t take many such experiences in missed communication to discourage or vex less able readers. Given the additional problem of these students’ probably limited attention spans, the options of giving up selection which is metaphoric are often the one taken. Even though the classics literature may speak to the universal human condition, young people have trouble relating because they have not experienced many of those human condition.
At the same time, some links need to be established between that ability and the interest. Interest in reading fluctuates widely before the age of sixteen, an age at which many students begin to think seriously about choices affecting their future: college, military service, industrial careers, dropping out of the academic scene altogether, and so forth. For most young people, interest in reading usually peaks between the age of twelve and fourteen. It is a period of intense, prolonged introspection in which the desire to raise and organize problems about self is at its height. It is a kind of limbo between a lost childhood and approaching adulthood. People at this age tend to be more interested in being alone with their lives. For some, reading fictions, especially novels which delve into the teenage experience, can be a source of comfort, challenge, stimulation, and escape. Young adult literature focuses on the nature and availability of literature with which youngsters at that difficult stage of their lives can identify.”[3]
John S. Simmons point out “People in these years are also capable of, and often involved in, deeper reflection that centers on abstract concepts: love, loyalty, fear, justice, betrayal, and the like. Obviously, their reading can feed this preoccupation, but the fare must be nourishing. In short, abstract thinking may contain a profound concern with interpersonal relationships, and reading can provide countless opportunities for them to view their problems from the detached prism of fiction.’’[4](p75)
‘‘Some of these interpersonal problems will be quite obvious. Some mention of them should be made.
1)
Problems related to communication with younger siblings, partially stemming from thirteen-year-olds’ desire that the ‘‘little people’’ regard them as adult-and these younger children’s irritating reluctance to cooperate;
2)
Problems related to the conflicting need to be accepted into a peer group;
3)
Problems which reside in thirteen-year-olds’ ambivalence toward members of the opposite sex (i.e, culture and peer pressure, clash with hormones). The gap between girls’ and boys’ relative immaturity exacerbates this greatly.
In all of the above, imaginative literature can become a source of excitement, revelation, guidance, and solace. Teachers as guidance counselors can be of great personal assistance to adolescents in their struggles. The movement of middle school curricula toward an emphasis on the personal and social identities of early adolescents, rather than on the cultural heritage into which they will someday be assimilated, provides a whole new niche for literature to occupy, one in which its relevance to the nature of the early teenage years can be maximized.’’[5](p75-76)
3. The Possibility and Practicality of Using Young Adult Literature as Reading Materials for Outside Reading
Teachers in senior middle school are usually responsible for introducing the study of literature to their students: Young Adult Literature can serve as an excellent vehicle for such an introduction. Teachers in senior middle school who deal with students of lower ability, non-academic motivations, and limited cultural backgrounds should also consider the use of Young Adult Literature to provide insight into the nature of literature study for those inpiduals. Young Adult Literature seems to offer an abundant and valuable resource to teachers who want to guide their students through this transition.
3.1 The Character of Young Adult Literature
Donelson and Nilsen offer the definition of Young Adult Literature:‘‘ any book freely choose for reading by some one in this age group’’.[6]p(2) Later it was defined as ‘literature written or marketed primarily for teenagers; Books to whose main characters the teenagers can personally relate; stories with an uncomplicated, often single plot line; books with plot that address the concerns of the young adults; literature that attracts a young adult readership’[7]p(2) Compared with the definition offered by Nilsen and Donelson, this definition is more specific and comprehensive. In recent years, Young Adult Literature is also considered as ‘books written for adult, about young adult and liked by young adults’ and more and more teachers prefer to match young adult books with classics bearing similar themes; thus, the genre of Young Adult Literature is further expanded.
As a reading material, young adult literature has many common characteristics: conflicts are often consisted with the young adult’s experience, themes are of interest to young people, protagonists and most characters are young adults, and language parallels that of young people. It is simply written in a natural, flowing language much like the way in which the young adults speak. Young adult literature is usually shorter. The young adult can finish in a comparatively short time without feeling tired and bored. This will guarantee an engaged and efficient reading. And Young Adult Literature is graded reading materials meeting young people’s different level intellectual development.
3.1.1 Young adult’s emotional development
‘‘Adolescence and preadolescence are difficult, unsettled periods for young people. They are no longer children. They are no yet adults. It is a time of change: a time for physical growth, sexual awareness, emotional and cognitive development. As young people move through these experiences or stages, they seem to be so alone in their struggle. But few of young people asked their parents and other adults to help them through their difficult period in their lives. Reading books helps young adults in their journey –their rites of passage—into adulthood. Books provide experiences that may help young adults through their adolescent years. Providing young people with Young Adult Literature not only in the bookstores but also in the class is imperative if we want adolescents to read about more experiences than they could have on their own. In addition, this literature serves young people in their struggle with identity, with their relationships with adults, and with their choices, which often suggest their concern with moral questions of right and wrong.’[8](p25)
3.2 Effective and Positive Influence
‘‘Young adult literature provides enjoyment, satisfaction and literary quality while it brings life and hope and reality to young people. The wide range of topics in Young Adult Literature such as friendship, death, porce, alienation, sibling rivalry, peer cruelty, racism, hostility and egocentricity, even struggle, conflict and feeling of the futility and hopelessness of life dramatize life in unfamiliar environments as experienced by characters of the learner’s own age. And therefore stimulate learners in encouraging self-expression and idea exploration. In this way, literature enlarges the students’ knowledge and understanding of human behavior for it exhibits thoughts and feelings which are often concealed in real life. Students, on the other hand, bring their unique life experience and world look when coming to read a text in class. Their confirming, revising or refuting the original outlook after confronting the writer’s view enable them to come up with a new understanding of the world .Then they will share their readings with their peers and teachers and reshape their understanding if needed. This aesthetic stance of reading is quite different from the traditional way of reading in that the former allows readers to have a virtual experience, living in the story world, connecting with characters, being emotionally involved while the latter focuses on looking for facts defined by Rosenblatt as ‘efferent reading’ which actually prevents learner from achieving the power of English expression.
Young Adult Literature is an attractive and motivational reading source that will satisfy the young adults’ reading interest at a particular age and help develop youngsters’ reading proficiency. Over a long period of time, Chinese young learners have been usually recommended to read some classic adult literature in simplified various which are considered as unappealing or out-dated. Young Adult Literature is a bridge between children’s literature and adult literature. It reflects a unique yet universal period of biological change and development for each human being.’’[9](p21-22)
3.3 Students Own Response
When Sullivan asked her students for information about their reading interest and habit, a ninth student said: ‘I love to read, but I hate literature’. He suggested that what he was reading in school had nothing, or at least very little, to do with him. He told us that his book report offered some relief because he could usually choose something that he knew how he would like, but what he read in the classroom was as he called it ‘dumb’.[10]P(156)
The details those students offer support the previous summary most have a very exciting experience with literature during their elementary schooling, but the break in this happy experience comes as they enter junior high or middle school.
There is obviously a wide chasm between what the school offers for students to read and what the students want to read in reading program. Students have had fewer experiences—and for some, no experience at all—in such areas as marriage and porce, ambition, greed and hate, so it is more difficult for them to make honest responses about what meaning is true for them. In contrast, when the book has a teenager as the protagonist and other young adult characters, the balance of knowledge and the authority that is brought in that reading is changed. Young adult are more easily able to evaluate the characters, their problems and the resolution of these problems.
4. The Power of Young Adult Literature Reading
One of the key reasons for students’ low interest in English learning is lack of the attractive and coherent reading material. Reading material which are used in the school are exam-oriented and boring which may hinder the students enthusiasm for learning English. Simultaneously, affect plays an important role in the learning English and English teaching should arouse the learners’ interest and motivation. The influence of Young Adult Literature reading materials in stimulating the learners’ love of reading and English learning from the prospect of affective factors is obvious. The qualitative evidence further proves that students really enjoy reading and sharing what they read with the peers. Benefits of other kinds from the Young Adult Literature reading are also obvious; such as increased vocabulary, faster reading speed and better reading comprehension. More encouraging is the fact that the majority of students are determined to read continuously after the experiment.
5. Using Young Adult Literature Materials outside Class in Senior Middle School---The Teaching Procedure
Outside reading promotes the initiative activity with the students. It is not forced by teaching missions. Students can choose the reading materials which they are interested in. As the counselors, teachers have to teach students how to ensure an effective outside reading.
5.1 Selecting Reading Materials
Choosing the appropriate reading materials is a key factor to the students’ love of reading. A very important part of the appropriate materials selection for any English or language is age appropriate. Day and Bamford state that ‘‘getting students to read extensively depends critically on what they read. The reading materials must be both easy and interesting. If the books do not appeal to most of the class, then all the efforts will be in vain.’’[11](P49) It seems appropriate to offer a minimal reminder as we select a novel for study as an example of what can be done in a response-centered class. If we expect students to have sufficient experience for a response, they must be able to relate in some manner to the assigned literature.
Karolides states the significance of using appropriate reading materials: ‘‘the language of a text the situation, characters, or the expressed issues can dissuade a reader from comprehension of the text and thus inhibit involvement with it. In effect, if the reader has insufficient linguistic or experiential background to allow participation, the reader cannot relate to the text, and reading act will be short-circuited.’’[12]) (P132)
In practice of selection, students can be invited to skim the information about a book around the book cover. Use the information in the picture, the famous critiques, the plot summary, the table of contents, the classified category, ect, to make guesses about what they are going to read is an efficient way to select interesting book.
Therefore, teachers must find the interesting, attractive and enjoyable materials that are personally significant to our students and that are within their linguistic ability.
5.2 Conducting Group-discussion
It is best, however, to allow students to lead the discussion of the novel. This approach teaches students that they can function with self-sufficiency and without teachers influencing their responses.
‘‘Small-group discussions may give students an opportunity to discuss some of their most important responses before sharing them in the large group. The small groups may also be used to allow students to further explore the general response that they shared in the large group. Students often feel less threatened in small groups and are more willing to explore ideas in that setting. Like large groups, smaller groups must have rules of behavior that enable students to function effectively in the interaction. Students must feel secure with their responses, and they must responses to others. They will recognize similarly among all of the responses.’’[13]
‘‘The teachers’ listening skills are crucial in this initial phase. As students react, you may need to make follow-up statements, questions, or acknowledgments to help them clarify, justify, or elaborate on their ideas. If the discussion drags, use generic question early in the discussion and more content-specific question later in the process. Try to keep these questions at a minimum and emphasize the teachers’ spontaneous reaction to students’ response because reactions are much more meaningful to students, and they help move the discussion on using students’ ideas rather than teachers’.
Here are some questions types to elicit students ’response:
Questions requiring students to remember facts:
Describe…
List…
What…?
Questions requiring students to prove or disprove a generalization made by someone else.
Would someone like to comment on that point?
OK. Anybody wants to add to what…said?
Question requiring students to derive their own generalizations.
How did you feel at the end of the story?
What did it mean to you?
Anything you want to talk about?
Questions requiring students to generalize about the relation of the total work to human experience
What …mean? / What is the author saying by….?
What is the significance of the statement…?
Question requiring students to carry generalization derived from the work into their own lives.
What were your first associations?
Can you relate the story to anything in your own experience?’’[14](p31)
5.3 Performing a Creative Drama
Role-play and improvisation expand the boundaries of experiences for students so that they develop a more complete understanding of themselves and the literature they are reading. Through role-playing and improvisation, students are able to think as characters would think and act as characters would act. Students take on a persona different from their own and work at making that character come alive as they perceive what that character would be like if he or she was real.
5.4 Writing a Book Report
“Responding reports including book report, the journal, the narrative, the personal essay, help students to become personally involved with the literature. They begin by having students make personal responses. After students have read and written about the novel on a personal level, they are ready to move to a more ‘intellectual’ level. They now think about the author’s craft: what strategies and techniques did the author use to generate the responses students have?
Responding reports also integrate reading and writing. Students can enjoy the totality of the novel by responding to the ideas presented and by understanding the techniques used by the author. Their thoughts about a particular issue or a question are a novel change as they move through the first draft of that paper. Many say that they use the journal in making these initial drafts. The very act of writing triggers other new responses. Some ideas are abandoned; other is expanded. Students feel more at ease when responding to a work in this way because they are in control of how they respond: how they structure their responses, what they include, and what they omit. As a result, they will grow in their understanding of their novel in particular and of literature in general.’’[15]
5.5 Reading management
Whether young Adult Literature can be used successfully as English outside reading materials largely depends on skillful management of the teachers that should be alert to avoid the old-ways of teaching. Traditional approach in teaching emphasizes close reading of the text with all the historical and cultural clues removed to find the only correct meaning in the text. Experienced teachers have with needed the degree to which motivation, whatever its origins, can lead to over learning by students who otherwise lack needed reading skills or broad sophistication in facing certain works of literature. When they are genuinely turned on, it is amazing what some youngsters can accomplish in the classroom. Conversely, well-prepared teachers usually find only frustration when they present works to indifferent groups, no matter how high the quality of those works are.
“Wang Xiaoping suggests that the following methods are effective:
1)
Using a familiar literary source or a song, a poem, a picture, a book cover, etc. to lead students into the text;
2)
Allowing students a quiet reading of partial text;
3)
Revealing just enough facts about the text to arouse students’ interest in the new work;
4)
Relating in discussion the text themes to students’ present concerns. [16](p30)
Positive teachers create enthusiastic readers. Creative oral and written activities with young adult literature have a positive effect on young people. Teachers must create within each class a positive atmosphere, a way of life conductive to promoting reading through positive affect. Positive teachers are realistic but always look for the best in their students. Teachers have an important role in fostering this reader response. They also share in the responsibility of helping students with their developmental tasks, growing moral judgment, and reading appreciation. The teacher participates in the discussion as an ordinary reader but also as a facilitator
Encourage students to talk extensively
Help students makes a community of meaning
Talk turns talking
Don’t interrupt
Ask. Don’t tell
Give comments, but be nice
Affirm students’ responses
Encourage reluctant readers
The affective studies of Rosenthal and Jacobsin showed that teacher’s positive attitudes toward the learning capabilities of students designated as likely to make substantial gains did, in fact help teachers provide a learning environment where those students prospered.[17](p49) We believe that creative oral and written activities with young adult literature have a positive effect on young people.
6. Conclusion
Young Adult Literature with its special features is considered as the reading material for the students in senior middle school. Its effective power is very helpful for the students. The teachers who work in some way with young people require familiarity with the characteristics of this age group. It is important that teachers know about young adult literature. In the western countries, reading literature is one of the most important courses in the school. In addition the relationships between teachers and students and teaching material are free and active. They can choose the teaching materials which they are interested in and change the teaching courses or ways freely. So they taught young adult literature to students in the classroom. The situation in China is similar. Different from the native speakers, the students in China do little literature reading because of the difficulty and cultural difference. Most teachings are done only for exams and teaching missions. So in China we have greater difficulties in promoting the use of young adult literature for outside reading.
So far, the research in this field is comparatively limited. Young adult literature is not available in most of the schools and most teachers find it difficult to put it into practice. And we have a lot of practical problems to solve. Nevertheless, if we keep on trying a practice we will fine more effective ways to enhance our students’ English interest and improve reading abilities.
Bibliography
[1] John S. Simmons & H. Edward Deluzain. Teaching Literature in Middle and Secondary Greades. [M] United State: Allyn and Bacon,1992.
[2] 赵均. 情感与初中英语课外读物达标. [J] 北京。首都师范大学 2004.
[3] 王初明. 外语学习中的认知与情感需要. [J] 第四期
[4] Donelson,k.,& Nilsen, A..Literature for Today’s Young Adult. [M] 5th edition. Glenview, IL:Scott,Foresman,1997.
[5] John H.bushman&Kay Parks Haas. Using Young Adult Literature in The English Classroom. [M] 3rd edition.Merrill Prentice Hall 67.2001
[6] 隋莉英 The Power of Young Adult Literature Reading Material in Fostering Learns’ Positive Affect in English Reading [J] 北京 首都师范大学学报 2005
[7] Sullivan,A.M.. The natural reading life: A high school anomaly. [M] english Journal, 80(6), [M]40-46.1991
[8] Karolides, N.J. The Transactional Theory of Literature. In N.J.Kaolides(Ed.),reader response in the classroom [M] 1992