An Empirical Study Of Application Of Critical Reading In High School

Critical reading is high level reading activity which demands the active involvement of reader by analyzing, evaluating and synthesizing what he has read with the assistance of logic and his knowledge and experience. In western countries, the critical reading ability is greatly valued and is one of the key aims in their education system, and children are encouraged to criticize everything. While in China, critical reading education is almost blank.Mastering critical reading ability is good for students. In this increasing competitive world, people with high critical ability and creative ability can showcase themselves, so it is important for students to learn and practice critical reading. Besides, according to New English Curriculum for Senior Middle School, students are supposed to understand the theme and purpose of a passage and reason based on clues in a passage. As a result, having critical reading in high school is both beneficial for developing students'critical reading ability, but also appeals to the requirement of new curriculum.At present, most high school students are relatively poor readers and not interested in English, because they are passive in reading, they have the reading class only to learn the usage of new words and new grammar or merely finish the exercises. They rarely have the chance or the inclination to think and conclude on their own, and they are basically at the stage of literal reading, violating the aim of the reading class. So promoting critical reading in high school can change this situation, improve students' critical reading awareness and ability and so improve their reading ability and interest in English.Based on interactive reading model, schema theory and constructivism learning theory, this paper tries to figure out whether practicing critical reading can improve students'reading ability and improve their interest in English. The subject of this experiment is two classes of grade two in Tianmen High School, and they were taught and trained how to read critically for three month with pretest and posttest to check their reading ability and questionnaire to check their change of interest in English. The results show that after the study and training of critical reading, they had an improvement in their marks and more interested in English than they used to be. As a result, the author concludes that it is significant to instruct high school students how to read critically. Developing students'critical reading ability can not only improve their reading ability and their interest in English, but also lay a sordid foundation for their creative study and work in the future, and meet the requirement that "shift from teacher-oriented to student-oriented, from exam-oriented to quality-oriented" in the educational reform of our country.