An Experimental Study On The Effects Of Critical Reading Training Upon Students' English Reading Comprehension In A Senior High School

As a high level reading, critical reading has received more and more attention in the language teaching. However, the current Chinese students' reading ability( including analysis, deductive and summary) is poor, especially the critical reading ability. Meanwhile, the research on critical reading in China started relatively late. There is limited information on empirical studies. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out a study to verify the effectiveness of critical reading training.This study is based on the constructive reading theory and schema theory, aiming at finding out the relationship between critical reading training and students' reading comprehension and the students' awareness of using critical reading strategy. The research questions are:(1) Can critical reading training enhance senior high school students' English reading comprehension?(2) Can critical reading training help to raise the students' awareness of using critical reading strategies?The experimental study lasted for fifteen weeks, with two classes in Guangzhou Yuexiu Foreign Language School as the subjects. One is the experimental class in which critical reading mode is conducted, the other is the control class in which the traditional teaching mode is adopted. In the whole process of the experiment, the author collects the data through the questionnaires, the pre-test and post-test and interview, using SPSS 17.0 to analyze the collect data. The major findings are shown as follows:(1) Critical reading training can enhance senior high school students' English reading comprehension for both the analysis ability and deductive ability are improved.(2) Critical reading training can help to raise students' awareness of using critical reading strategies, but the use of some strategies, such as interpreting authors' attitude and writing intention are still far from satisfactory.To sum up, the author believes that it's feasible to carry out critical reading teaching in a senior high school. And critical reading strategy training, such as words inference, distinguishing the facts from opinion, identifying and analysis the main idea, interpreting author's attitude and writing intention is closely related to students' reading comprehension. Meanwhile, it is hoped that more and more teachers will conduct researches on critical reading training, so that both students' critical thinking ability and students' reading comprehension will be improved.