Application Of The Question-Based Learning To The English Teaching Of Reading Comprehension In Senior School

High school is an important stage in students' cognitive development. Psycological studies suggest that the level of intelligence developed in this stage depends crucially on the student's cognitive activity. In light of this suggestion, high-school English reading education should focus on helping students develop the basic reading skills and the capability of critical thinking. In particular, these skills are developed through formal reading training. In other words, the ultimate goal of reading training is not only to acquire knowledge, learn about other cultures and master skills, but to develop a way of thinking. This definition of reading education leads us to think. In the present thesis, I test the hypothesis that Question-Based Learning, a teaching method developed on constructive theory and second language theory, improves high school students' reading comprehension.In senior high school, two teaching classes are set in Grade One, each with 50 students. The traditional teaching method was used in class one named control class, with teacher speaking in order to achieve the goal of teaching knowledge. The entire teaching and learning activity includes organizing teaching, reviewing old lesson, introducing new lesson, teaching new lesson and assigning homework. On the contrary, Class Two named experimental class adopted a question-based learning method, which is teacher-led, student-centered, with question-solving as goal. The entire teaching and learning activity includes raising questions, reading and thinking, discussing and summarizing. Combined efforts such as English reading ability tests, questionnaires were used to collect data, through the analysis of which we explore the changes brought by question-based learning method. The results showed that the students in experimental class rank higher in average score, excellence rate than those in control class.Therefore, the author concluded that as an important means of teaching and reading, question-based learning method is in line with the mental development of high school students. If teachers grasp the skills to design questions, raising different questions in different reading phases based on students' thinking way, their reading ability will be improved dramatically.