Abstract：Personalized learning has a big role to play in the Big Data Era and will provide learners with great benefits. This paper briefly reviews personalized learning in China and abroad with the priority given to teaching English reading. The general analysis of 187 articles published in the journal of Foreign Languages Teaching in Schools between January 2017 and April 2018 indicates that reading remains the focus of English teaching, whereas the personalized approach has drawn little attention and personalized learning in English reading is in a dilemma. The thesis discusses the possible reasons for the dilemma as well as gives some possible solutions. Two patterns are given to provide school English teachers some clues for how to leverage personalized reading tasks and hierarchical teaching, as well as to promote personalized learning in English reading.

Keywords: teaching English reading; personalized learning; hierarchical teaching

英语阅读个性化教学困境

摘  要：本文简要介绍了国内外个性化学习，分类统计了《中小学外语教学》上发表的相关英语教学论文，由此引出个性化英语阅读教学目前的困境。个性化学习在大数据时代具有巨大的潜力，并且可以为学生带来很多好处。根据分析情况来看，阅读教学仍然是英语教学的重点，然而个性化阅读教学仅占很小的一部分。本文分析了其困境背后可能存在的原因，并探究了可能的解决途径，向教育工作者、学校、社会提供了一些建议。另外，笔者给出了两种实施个性化英语阅读教学和分层教学的模式，借此来帮助教师找到实施个性化教学的方向，以促进个性化教学在英语阅读教学中发挥更好的作用。

关键词：英语阅读教学；个性化学习；分层教学

Contents

1. Introduction. 1

1.1 Background 1

1.2 Meaning and Purpose 1

   1.2.1 Meaning. 1

1.2.2 Purpose 3

2. Literature Review.. 4

2.1 Personalized Learning 4

1.2.1 The Definition of Personalized Learning.. 4

1.2.2 The Similar Concept of Personalized Learning-Differentiated Learning. 4

2.2 Different Viewpoints towards Personalized Learning.. 4

2.2.1 Viewpoints Abroad 4

2.2.2 Viewpoints in China. 5

2.3 A General Analysis of FLTS Articles on Teaching English Reading. 7

3. The Dilemma of Personalized Learning in English Reading.. 8

4. Possible Solutions.. 9

4.1 Adoption of Personalized Learning  9

4.1.1 Adoption of Personalized Learning Abroad. 9

4.1.2 Adoption of Personalized Learning in China 10

4.2 Possible Solutions. 11

4.3 Directions towards Personalized Learning in English Reading 12

4.3.1 The Direction of Personalized Task Design.. 13

4.3.2 The Direction of Hierarchical Teaching.. 17

5. Conclusion. 20

5.1 Implications.. 20

5.2 Limitations 21

References 22

1. Introduction

1.1 Background

Personalized teaching, which can be seen as early as in “educating someone according to his natural ability” from The Analects of Confucius in China about one thousand years ago, and again put forward in John Dewey’s Democracy and Education in America seventy years ago, has always been a topic for heated debate. In America, John Dewey has cast a long symbolic shadow in which all educational reformers now walk, as they pursue reform to move education closer to students’ real lives, incorporating their inpidual differences. As the student-centered class theories have been coming in popularity, personalized learning again comes into educators’ eyes. In western countries like Finland, the studies on personalized teaching and learning have lasted for several decades. After his daughter’s birth, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced that they would donate 99% of their Facebook shares to charitable work, including the promotion of personalized learning. Among all the “learning revolutions”, personalized learning seems to be the favorite of people, educators included .