The Application Of Action Research Into Teaching English Reading In Senior Middle School

The State Education Commission's Senior English Syllabus stipulates precisely that English teaching should place a primary emphasis on cultivating students' reading ability. Reading teaching is an important part of English teaching in middle schools. It is the main means of training student's language using and expressing abilities. By reading teaching, teachers can help students to form good reading habits and reading skills, and thus help them to improve their reading competence. In order to cultivate students' reading ability, our English teachers spend a lot of time and energy, but the results are not satisfactory. With the reform of the old educational system, the traditional teaching model centralized on "teachers" has been gradually changed into modern teaching model centralized on "students", which advocates "interactive class". Our reading teaching in middle schools has experienced the model from past "reading-explaining-testing" to present "introducing- reading-applying". The old model only took reading materials as transmitters of new knowledge. It only paid attention to the superficial comprehension of reading texts and ignored the deep comprehension. It is known to all that training students' reading ability is a focus in senior high school English teaching. Reading comprehension scores carry a big weight in NMET, which is about 1/3.This forces us to reflect our teaching so as to enhance our professional development and teaching quality. The strategies which are used for reflection have recently been more and more popular. How to solve the gap between theory and practice is the main problem among those foreign language educational workers. Action research that is based on self-reflection teaching model can integrate theory with practice and research with action. Its purpose is to solve practical problems. Its object is educational activity itself. Teachers can be involved in several research methods such as data collection, students' study diaries, interview, questionnaire, analysis and interpretation, etc. So it is one of the methods which can bridge the gap between theory and practice. It's also a type of research measure whichhas developed abroad recently. By doing action research, teachers can not only apply theories into practice but also become more reflective, more critical and more open to change in teaching approaches and methods. This article describes and analyzes the action research on senior middle school English reading teaching, demonstrates the theory and background of action research, states relevant theories and present conditions of middle school reading teaching, shows the significance of applying action research into teaching reading, and further illustrates action research's application into teaching English reading in a senior middle school. Doing this action research has taken the following steps: problem identification, hypothesis, preliminary investigation, review of the problem and hypothesis, planning action, implementation of the plans, revising plans, data collection and reflection. In the end, this article reflects its practical effect in teaching and discusses the significance in English teaching.