Abstract

Imitation is the basic method when babies learn to speak. And Reading-aloud is a traditional and effective way to learn a language, especially for the language beginners or for those poor language learners. The writer wants to combine imitation and reading-aloud and find out what would happen. This paper aims to offer a good method for the middle school students to learn English. And that is imitative reading-aloud.

Based on the fact that most middle school students are English learning beginners, imitative reading-aloud is very fit for them. This paper preliminarily explores the effect of the imitative reading-aloud on English learning with the constructivism theory and the input hypothesis. It is found out that implementing imitative reading-aloud is feasible and necessary at the middle school.

This research takes the students in 04 and 06 classes in Grade 7, 2015, at the Linping No.3 Middle School as research objectives. Both qualitative and quantitative research methodology is taken in this paper. The qualitative data are acquired by questionnaires and exams. And the quantitative study is carried out with 97 students participated in the study. In the experimental class, the students are guided by the writer and their English teachers to practice imitative reading-aloud training for nearly 3 months. At last, through comparing the data got from the experiment class and the contrast class, the writer found out that imitative reading-aloud has positive effect on the English learning of the middle school. After 3 months of imitative reading-aloud training, the students' learning skills in different ways, especially their abilities of listening, reading and writing have been improved a lot and their comprehensive ability as well.

This research got a conclusion that imitative reading-aloud is an effective method for the middle school students, most of whom are beginners, to learn English. Therefore, imitative reading-aloud is really a good method of English learning in the middle school. It should be widely used by English teachers to help the students learn English. 

Keyword: Imitative reading-aloud; the middle school; English learning; effects

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

1. Introduction  1

    1.1 Research background 1

    1.2 Research motivation and objectives . 2

    1.3 An overall structure of the paper  2

2.Literature review 4

    2.1 Imitative reading-aloud  4

        2.1.1 Reading-aloud . 4 

        2.1.2 Imitation  5

        2.1.3 Imitative Reading-aloud  7

2.2 Constructivism theory. 7 

2.3Input theory . 8

        2.3.1 Input hypothesis  8 

        2.3.2 Acquisition-learning hypothesis. 8

    2.4 Literature research at home and abroad 8

3.Research Design  10

    3.1 Research questions 10

    3.2 Research participants . 10

    3.3 Research methods and procedures 10

        3.3.1 Research methods 10

        3.3.2 Research procedures 10

4.Result and Discussion . 13

    4.1 Results and discussion of questionnaires 13

    4.2 Results and discussion of exam 17

5.Concluding remarks. 22

    5.1 Major findings  22

    5.2 Pedagogical implication 22

    5.3 Limitations and prospects  22

Bibliography  23

Appendix A. 24

Appendix B. 25