Investigations And Reflections On Current Critical English Reading Of Senior High Students

The main way that senior high students access to English is through reading,which is the media for spiritual communication between the writer and the reader by which they can communicate across time and space.While reading is the precondition of understanding,which is the process of analyzing,processing and dealing with information,it is the key to forming critical thinking ability.Critical thinking ability,creativity and problem solving are listed as the key competences for citizens of the 21 st century.The cultivation of critical thinking ability is also an important task in English teaching in senior high schools of China.According to High School English Curriculum of our country(hereinafter referred to as the Curriculum),developing the students' critical thinking ability is regarded as the focus of English teaching.The Curriculum defines the following three aspects as the key tasks for students in English teaching in senior high schools,which are the ability of appropriate use of English in interpersonal interaction,the ability to access to information and process information in English and the ability to analyze and solve problems in English as well as that of critical thinking.Effective critical reading practice is the main way that teachers cultivate students' critical thinking ability.However,influenced by exam-oriented education,high school English reading teaching is mostly in the lower level of reading state and so are language knowledge input and practice which take up most of the time of English reading class.Therefore,students have an inadequate understanding of text information.As a result of the only training way of multiple choice,which copies the training form of NMET reading comprehension,the training and cultivation of students' critical reading and thinking abilities are suppressed.They lack the abilities of synthesization,comparison,analyzing,reasoning and judgment,let alone the abilities of solving problems,especially those of critical and creative thinking.In order to have a good understanding of critical English reading of Senior High students,and find out the reasons why they lack the ability so that we can find some effective strategies which helps cultivate students' critical reading,therefore we conducted the research.Before the research,the writer first consulted many theories and researches on critical reading both at home and aboard,and thus concluded some adaptable ones as the base of the research,then carried out a questionnaire survey and a test of students' critical reading ability.126 students of two classes in Grade Two taught by me took part in the survey.They are classes majoring in sciences,which are newly-formed ones coming from different classes.The new classes were instructed by different English teachers,so the questionnaire result can reflect the teaching of different teachers in students' critical thinking cultivation.The survey results show that the students' development of critical thinking ability and reading situation are worrying.According to the observation of reading classes,based on the theory of critical reading and learning motivation theory,the author designed the teaching experiments aimed at improving students' critical reading ability,which lasts for 12 weeks,and the two subject classes include an experimental class and a control class.The main reading materials in this experiment are nine modules of reading courses from compulsory Book Five and optional Book Six published by Foreign Languages Teaching and Research Press.During the experimental period,the control class followed the traditional reading model,while in the reading design of the experimental class,we apply critical reading strategy and inspire the English reading motivation strategy in the four reading steps: Before reading,While reading,Post reading and Assignments.The critical reading strategy and measures include analyzing the style of the article,generalizing the writing structure,summarizing the purpose of writing(main idea),generalizing the author's opinion and attitude,identifying facts and details,summarizing and understanding,reasoning and inferring,questioning and evaluating.Traditional reading model in the experimental class have been reformed.We combine reading with speaking as well as reading with writing through students' cooperative learning and inquiry-based learning.After the experiment,the students' development of critical thinking ability and their English reading ability is tested.The results are as follows: the experiment shows that in the course of natural development of students' reading ability,the training of their critical reading strategy not only promotes the development of their English reading skills as well as the cultivation of their critical thinking ability but also improves their spoken and written English effectively.The results of this research can offer reliable referential data for senior high English teachers in developing students' critical thinking abilities.The conclusion of the research can provide guidance for reading,which has certain theoretical and practical significance.