A Study On English Critical Reading Teaching Method In Senior High School

In an information-exploded era,reading is regarded as the important means of gaining information and exploring the world.Facing enormous amounts of complex information,senior high school students should be taught the method of critical reading,which enables them to evaluate the different kinds of information sensibly and protect themselves from being misled by harmful information.Besides,for senior high students in China who learn a foreign language,reading is regarded as the optimal way to improve their English proficiency for the lack of genuine English-learning context.However,the current English reading teaching of senior high school is far from effective in terms of teaching quality and students’ development.In the present English reading class,the focus is still put on the explanation and practice of grammar,the mechanical memory of key words and expressions,as well as the literal translation of the reading text and recitation of beautiful sentences.This traditional method not only limits the improvement of students’ reading proficiency and the all-round development of thinking abilities,but also makes students gradually became less interested in English learning.Therefore,this paper tentatively put forward Critical Reading Teaching Method with the hope of adjusting the current reading teaching methods,arousing students’ enthusiasm for English learning and the vitality throughout English classes.This teaching method not only fully meets the necessary requirements emphasized in the New English Curriculum Standard for senior high school,but also contributes to the development of students’ critical thinking ability and reading proficiency.On the basis of the learning theory of constructivism and critical discourse analysis theory,an empirical study is conducted to further verify whether the critical reading teaching method is practicable and effective.The instructional experiment was carried out in Fuzhou Hua Qiao Middle School,which lasted 3 months,with two parallel classes in Grade I as its subjects.One class is Experimental Class which was taught by Critical Reading Teaching Method based on task-based teaching method,while the other served as Control Class in which the traditional task-centered reading teaching method was conducted.The research methods including Questionnaires,reading comprehension tests and interviews are used to collect the needed statistics which are processed and analyzed by SPSS 13.0.The results of the study demonstrate the following aspect:1)Critical Reading Teaching Method enables students to increase the frequency of using critical reading strategy.2)Critical Reading Teaching Method contributes to the improvement of students’ critical thinking ability,especially the inferential ability.3)The students in Experimental Class become more interested in English learning and more satisfied with reading class than they used to be.From the analysis above,the practice of Critical Reading Teaching in senior high school is feasible and valid.It’s hoped that this experimental study can offer a few meaningful suggestions for extensive researches on Critical Reading Teaching.