A Study Of Application Of Reading Circles In Primary Schools English Teaching: A Competency-based Perspective

Reading circles are activities in which students discuss and share reading contents in groups.This activity embodies the concept of cooperative learning.In reading circles,students are the center of learning.Different students read different reading parts of a task according to their own roles,and then discuss with each other,negotiate and construct meaning together.Cooperative learning emerged in the United States in the early 1970 s,and it has been widely used in school teaching in many countries.Cooperative learning has played a positive role in improving the classroom atmosphere,improving students’ academic performance and promoting all-round development of students.In the reading circles task,students are required not only to have a large amount of language input,deep language processing,but also to have enough language output.Compared with other foreign language teaching methods,reading circles play a positive role in language acquisition.As an effective teaching activity,reading circles were applied into classrooms of primary schools by an English teacher in the 1980 s,which succeeded in education.Since then,foreign scholars have carried out lots of researches on reading circles,but there are few relevant researches in China.The cultivation of students’ core competency has rapidly become the focus in the world of education since the concept of core competency was put forward.Under the new curriculum standards in China,English subject should not only be limited to the cultivation of students’ language ability,but should be student-oriented and focus on cultivating students’ language ability,cultural awareness,thinking ability and learning ability,broadening students’ reading horizon,and cultivating students’ English core competency.Based on the theory of cooperative learning,this thesis adopts the method of empirical research.It focuses on how to effectively carry out English reading teaching in primary schools based on the English core competency and reading circles by combining with the current situation of English reading teaching in primary schools.Three research questions are addressed in this thesis as follows:(1)How are reading circles designed and implemented effectively in primary schools English teaching?(2)What changes do the design and implementation of reading circles bring to students’ reading literacy?(3)What reading circles strategies can effectively cultivate students’ reading awareness and reading ability?The research subjects were class 1 and class 2 Grade Six from a primary school in Guiyang,Guizhou province.Reading circles are adopted in the experimental class(EC)and traditional English reading teaching method is implemented in the control class(CC).After application of reading circles and analysis of research data,we can find that the reading circles have a great effect on students’ English reading learning from thesis.In the reading circles,students read different reading contents by themselves according to their own roles in a group and then they need to process reading material deeply.And finally they discuss and communicate their ideas with other classmates in their groups.This kind of activity effectively cultivates students’ learning ability,thinking ability,language expression ability and cooperation ability as well as developing students’ English core competency.It is found that after adopting a series of reading circles strategies in class,students’ reading awareness and reading ability have been greatly changed passive reading before into active reading now.Therefore,in the process of teaching,teachers can adopt reading circles tasks to carry out reading teaching,creating a classroom environment for students’ independent learning and cooperative learning.Besides it helps students develop interest in English reading and enhance learning motivation,so as to promote students’ English learning,cultivate students’ English core competency and improve teaching quality.