A report on the analysis of learners’ needs in English reading

1. A report on the analysis of learners’ needs in Englishreading Team player: Liu Wei, Miao Jiyang,Liang Mei, Li Li

2. Introduction Reading has been considered by Chinese EFL learners as the most crucial medium in context. Also, reading has been paid the most attention and has been the main focus in the English language testing compared with the other three skills(listening, speaking, and writing). Aim: to investigate the condition of the senior middle school students in their EFL learning in term of reading Focus: 1)background of the subjects 2) purposes of reading 3)reading material 4)reading time 5)reading problems and solution 6) reading techniques 7) teaching method Subjects: 46students(23 boys and 23 girls) from senior Grade One in No.Seven middle school of Beijing Instrument: a questionnaire of 14 items during 10 minutes conducted at a classroom on the morning of Oct, 14th

3. Analysis part one: subjects’ background related to items 1 and 2) Conclusion : Instructional/Formal learning is the primary source of EFL in the Chinese context.

4. Analysis part two: reading purpose (related to items 3) Conclusion: Teaching and learning in reading should be geared at advancing the growth of students not just for the preparation for passing exams.

5. Analysis part three: reading materials (related to items 5, 6 and 7) Conclusion:Practice in and out of class is an important principle for language learning. And the higher level the students are at, the varied their reading materials are.

6. Analysis part four: reading time(item 4) Conclusion:73.91% students spend 0-1 hour in reading and 26.08% students spend 1-2 hours. No students spend more than 2 hours. Most students arrange an amount of time to read. Maybe some students don’t read besides classroom reading. This can be confirmed by the interpretation for item 5.

7. Analysis part five: reading obstacles (related to items 7 and 9) Conclusion:next page

8. Conclusion: First, at the basic stage of EFL learning, language should be the focus of teaching because EFL course belongs to language rather than subject matter course. Language is a means for seeking information. But without a good command of the means, no one can obtain the information s/he wants. Second, vocabulary is the core of language learning. The 1990s saw a strong trend of vocabulary centralism claimed by some applied linguists in language teaching. Third, relevant background is another factor having effect on reading comprehension. All these should be born in mind by EFL teachers when teaching English in classroom.

9. Analysis part six: reading styles of learner Conclusion: Most than half of the subjects possess a good habit of reading, that is reading by line. However this finding is contradicted with what we find in item 7and 9. Therefore, we interviewed some of the students who made such choice.

10. Analysis part seven: style of reading comprehension(item10) Conclusion: More students use the top-bottom way in reading. This is also in contradiction with what we found in previous items. It is found that there is no significant differences between the genders.

11. Part eight: ways of reading materials presented(item14) • By “traditional”, we mean that materials are paper-mediumed. By “multi-medium”,we refer to tapes, CD,CD-room,computers,etc. • Psychological researches find that the result of learning can be best achieved when as many sensories as possible are activated.

12. Analysis part nine: style of teaching in reading • 20%students hope that their EFL teachers should pay attention on vocabulary and grammar,which agrees with what was found about item 7. • 32.60% (15 students) think that teachers should stress the importance of cultural background. This can be related to items and 7. • 17.39%(8students) argue that linguistic elements and cultural background are both important in reading. • Only 2 students like their teachers to assign them to read many passages within a limit time.

13. Conclusion: From the above description, a conclusion can be drawn that 63.04%(29 students) tend to like EFL teachers to give priority to language learning at the level of vocabulary and grammar in reading. 46.83%(22 students)agree that the teaching of cultural background in reading classes is also very crucial. It is should be point out that linguistic elements such as vocabulary and grammar are only the building blocks of language system but they don’t exist in a separate way in our daily life. Rather ,it is text/discourse that is regarded by more more linguists as the real building block that from the speech/talk in human’s social setting.

14. Final Conclusion • The above analysis reminds teachers that they can not ignore the motivation of the students in their reading. • The students still have no access to much extra-curriculum materials. The teacher should encourage the students to do more out-of-class reading. • The method employed in the reading class should be converted to a more student-centered one. • There is still limitation in the above analysis due to the time and the number of the respondents. Further investigation should be done in the future.