Improving Students' Reading Ability Through Group Work Guided By EP Principles

As we know, English is playing a more and more important role in our daily life. For students in China, reading is paramount, where English is learned as a foreign language. Listening, speaking, reading and writing are the four essential skills of language competence, and the major goal of the English teaching in senior school is to improve students' communicative competence, especially their reading ability. However, the author finds that many students are afraid of reading, and they show little interest in reading comprehension. They do not know how to deal with the difficulties they meet, in other words, they do not know how to read. The author thinks the traditional reading teaching model should take the responsibility. There is lack of interaction and real life of language in traditional reading classes. That is why the New English Curriculum Standard recommends using task-based approach and learning in group work in English classes so as to do things with words and foster students' comprehensive competence of using the language.In this paper, the author analyzes the present situation of reading in senior schools and problems existed in reading classes. In order to solve these problems, the author illustrates a new teaching method of reading —group work guided by Exploratory Practice principles, which focuses on the real life of the classroom and the interaction between students and teachers, students and students, students and reading texts.Also, the author has conducted an experiment, during which the control group was taught in the traditional way, while the experimental group was taught by thenew method. After four months' experimental teaching, a reading test and a post-trial were used to find out the difference. The results of the post test and post-survey showed that students' reading ability in the experimental group had significantly improved. Simultaneously, creative thoughts have been obviously seen in the experimental group.The conclusion is that group work guided by EP principles proves to be an effective way to stimulate the students' interest of reading and improve their reading ability.