An Action Research On Cooperative Learning In Senior High School English Reading Teaching

Influenced by exam-oriented education,English reading in China has always been the focus of English teaching.However,although reading is highly valued by English teachers,most Chinese students don’t finish their reading very well.Taking Huangping Minzu High School,where the author works,as an example,most English teachers in this school still use traditional teaching models of reading,bottom-up approach,in reading class,which is one of reasons why students’ English reading scores are not ideal in this school.And most students think that English reading class is boring,and even some students dislike taking English reading class,which reflected in their low interest in reading.What’s more,most students’ English reading proficiency is low in this school,and an important reason attributed to their reading strategy isn’t being used well enough.Furthermore,reading in high school English textbooks often requires students to discuss questions based on articles,which often needs cooperation between students,but students lack awareness and ability of cooperation,and English teachers also think little of cooperation between students in the process of reading teaching.This study is argued that students’ low level of reading ability is one of main causes of their poor reading scores in Huangping Minzu High School.And reading strategy is one of the main factors affecting students’ reading ability.In order to improve students’ reading proficiency in this school,the author is committed to training students’ reading strategies within a context of cooperative learning by action research.Based on social interdependence theory and schema theory,this study explores the influence of cooperative reading teaching on students’ reading proficiency.Specifically speaking,this study is designed to answer following three questions according to the teaching procedures of cooperative reading teaching.(1)In which aspects have senior high school students’ reading strategies changed significantly by applying method of cooperative reading teaching?(2)What is the impact of cooperative reading teaching on senior high school students’ emotional attitudes?(3)What is the impact of cooperative reading teaching on senior high school students’ reading ability?For the sake of answering these three research questions,the author conducts a one-semester English reading strategy training for 54 students from Class 7,Grade 2 of Huangping Minzu High School in the class of cooperative reading teaching.In other words,two cycles of action research are conducted through the research procedure of“planning-implementation-reflection-adjustment-replaning-reimplementat ion-rereflection” in this study during four months.Moreover,the author uses five research tools: tests,questionnaires,interviews,classroom observations and reflection logs to collect experimental data in this study.After a semester of more than four months of action research,and the results of study show that students’ English reading proficiency has been improved in cooperative reading teaching,which is mainly reflected in that the method of cooperative reading teaching all has a positive impact on students’ reading strategy,reading ability and emotional attitudes.Details as follows.As far as the first research question,it can be seen from the research results that students’ reading strategies change more significantly in vocabulary skills,skimming,scanning and structural analysis than prediction and inference among six dimensions of reading strategies involved in this study.As for the second research question,the research results show that cooperative learning not only enhances students’ interest in reading,but also makes students hold a positive attitude towards reading.All students interviewed say that they have full confidence in their future reading,and they express their willingness to use cooperative learning for later reading.For the third research question,the research results show that interviewed students’ all say that their reading ability has been improved.Besides,the author conducts the paired sample t-test for three reading scores in Test 1,2 and 3,and shows that the value of p for two cycles of action research both is 0.000(p <0.01),which indicates students’ reading scores in Test 2 and 3 are higher than their original scores in Test 1,with significant differences between reading scores of three tests.It follows that cooperative reading teaching plays an obviously positive role in improving students’ reading ability,which is mainly reflected in their obviously improved reading scores.Therefore,the implementation of cooperative reading strategy training in high school English reading teaching is very feasible,which provides a very meaningful reading teaching mode for many novice high school teachers.It can be seen that this study aims at exploring the training of English reading strategies for senior high school students in the context of cooperative learning,which has some practical significance for improving senior high school students’ English reading proficiency.Meanwhile,this study also provides diverse models of collaborative reading teaching for teaching English reading in senior high schools.Moreover,this study still has some limitations due to the author’s limited experience and competence.For example,the period of study is short;study subjects are younger;and types of reading strategies involved are less diverse.