A Study On The Application Of Reading Circles Teaching Model To English Reading Class In Senior High School

Reading is an information process that involves readers and reading materials to build meaning,which plays an important role in both personal academic development and social-cultural communication.In China,senior English reading teaching is teacher-centered,mainly using textbooks as reading materials,which invests much time to finish the tasks in the textbooks.However,New English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School calls on : Not only should textbooks be focused on,but extracurricular reading should be enlarged;And the whole meaning of reading material and students' main status in learning should be emphasized.From these aspects,increasing the proportion of extensive reading and stressing student-centered teaching need to be attached great importance in senior English reading learning.The study attempts to apply a student-centered teaching model,”Reading Circles” raised by a scholar,Mark Furr,to the senior English class,aiming to probe into the following three questions:(1)Can the application of reading circles teaching model improve students' reading competence?(2)Can reading circles teaching model have any impacts on students' reading attitudes?(3)What are students' perceptions of reading circles?The study selected two parallel classes of one school in Lanzhou as control class and experimental class.In the experiment,the control class was taught with textbooks and in traditional teaching method while reading circles teaching model was applied to the experiment class with Bookworm Series as reading materials.Both classes were given the same reading teaching periods and amount of reading materials.The experiment combined the quantitative method and qualitative method together.Before and after experiment,pre-test,post-test and questionnaires were respectively implemented to all the participants,and the data from them would be analyzed by SPSS 22.0.In the end,an interview was adopted to further explore the perception of students in experiment class about reading circles.The result shows that reading circles teaching model can improve students' reading competence,and have some impacts on students reading attitudes.Students also have positive attitudes to reading circles,which they think can stimulate students' reading interest and boost their reading confidence.The experiment results prove the feasibility of application of reading circles teaching model in senior English reading class.This approach not only enhances students' reading competence and interest but also highlights the main status of students in learning.