A Study On The Effectiveness Of The “reading Circle” Model In English Reading Teaching In Junior Middle School

Reading is a necessary skill for students’ English learning.Reading ability and interest are significant for students to learn English well.However,under the influence of exam-oriented education,teachers pay more attention to the teaching of grammar,vocabulary,and other language knowledge in the current English reading teaching in junior high school.They often use injection teaching method and ignore the deep meaning of reading text,resulting in lowing the students’ reading ability and reading interest.Therefore,how to mobilize students’ reading interest and improve their reading ability in an effective way is a problem that teachers and researchers need to solve.Adhering to the student-centered teaching concept,the “Reading Circle” mode can improve students’ participation in class,mobilize students’ enthusiasm for English learning,guide students to pay attention to the deep meaning and inspiration of reading texts,and thus effectively improve students’ reading ability and interest.At present,domestic and foreign researches about the “Reading Circle” mode have achieved a lot of valuable results,and a consensus has been reached on the advantages of the“Reading Circle” mode and the optimization of reading classroom.But there are still some deficiencies in the study of the “Reading Circle” mode in English reading teaching in junior high school,and the validity of the “Reading Circle” mode needs to be tested further in practice.Based on Cooperative Learning Theory,Scaffold Theory and Independent Learning Theory,this study applies the “Reading Circle” mode to English reading teaching in junior high school.This study takes 90 students in two parallel classes of Grade eight of a junior high school in Jinan City as subjects,and conducts a four-month teaching control experiment.The “Reading Circle”mode is adopted in the experimental class,while the traditional reading teaching mode is still used in the control class,aiming to verify the effectiveness of the “Reading Circle” mode through comparison.This study respectively explains the following two questions:(1)Can the application of the “Reading Circle” mode to English reading teaching in junior high school effectively improve students’ reading ability? If so,which specific reading ability has been improved effectively?(2)Can the application of the “Reading Circle” mode to English reading teaching in junior high school effectively improve students’ reading interest? This study collects and sorts out experimental data through testing,questionnaire and interview.Then the data collected during the experiment and the interview results are quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed to obtain the research results.The results show that:(1)The “Reading Circle” mode can effectively improve students’ English reading ability,especially in the abilities of guessing the meaning of words,summarizing the main idea and reasoning and judgment,but it has no significant effect on the improvement of students’ ability to understand details.(2)The “Reading Circle” mode can effectively improve students’ interest in English reading.According to the results,the study suggests that English teachers in junior high school should properly adopt the “Reading Circle” mode in teaching.In order to give full play to the positive role of the “Reading Circle” mode,help students stimulate their reading interest,improve their reading ability,teachers should also help students to select excellent extracurricular reading materials and give them timely and effective guidance.