An Empirical Study Of Critical Reading To English Reading Teaching In Senior Middle School

New English Curriculum Standard for senior middle school published by theEducation Ministry of the People’s Republic of China(2003:7-8) points out clearly thatstudents should develop the competences of gaining and processing information from text,guessing the meaning of new words, using the clues in the article to reason the attitude ofthe author, clarifying the writing style of the article, learning how to analyze and solveproblem in English, and eventually reach to think critically. However, from the teachingexperience, the author finds that students’ reading comprehension and readingperformance in those aspects are not satisfactory. The main reason for students’ losingmarks in English reading comprehension is not lacking basic linguistic knowledge butlacking the ability of processing the deep information of a passage.As a kind of deep reading, Critical Reading emphasizes predicting, analyzing,summarizing, reasoning, judging, evaluating and other critical logical thinking. It can helpstudents to improve the ability to read in deep stance and at the same time to raisestudents’ critical and creative awareness.Although critical reading has its obvious advantages, the domestic researches on itmainly focus on higher education. The research into critical reading in high school Englishteaching is still rare. Therefore, it is important and urgent for us to apply the criticalreading to high school English reading. According to the requirement of New EnglishCurriculum Standard, considering the problems of practical English teaching, the author tries introducing Critical Reading to the English reading teaching in senior high schools,to explore a new reading teaching pattern which suits new curriculum reform, hoping toinspire students to read a passage from new and deep level, eventually cultivate students’deep reading skills and critical and innovative abilities.After analyzing the relevant researches at home and abroad, based on the theory ofWallace’s Critical Reading Framework, the author conducted an experimental study on CRin Yuci No.1Senior High School in Jinzhong. The experiment lasts one semester fromSeptember,2012to January,2013.100students of Class1007and Class1013which theauthor taught in senior grade two in Yuci No.1Senior High School are chosen as thesubjects. Class1007with50students is selected randomly as the Experimental Class(EC),receiving CR instruction, while Class1013also with50students is chosen as the ControlClass(CC), taught by traditional instruction. Pre-test, post-test and questionnaire are usedto collect data. All the data are analyzed by SPSS17.0. The results prove the hypotheses:CR instruction is more effective to improve students’ reading comprehension, especiallyhigh level reading comprehension; CR can also improve the awareness of conducting highlevel reading and creative thinking.As a kind of high level reading, Critical Reading can not only be applied to highereducation, but also can be employed into middle school’ English education. The results ofthe experiment that the author conducted in senior high school also proves that CriticalReading can significantly improve students’ reading comprehension, especially analyzingstructure, inferring hidden information, evaluating writing style and other deep readingabilities. Applying Critical Reading to Senior High Middle School can efficiently fosterstudents’ awareness of conducting high level reading and creative thinking during Englishlearning, which is the requirement of New Curriculum Reform and information age.