A Survey Of Critical Reading Ability Of Senior Three Students

Reading as a way of language input,is agreeably the most important one of the four basic language skills.The English Curriculum Standard makes explicit requirements for the teaching of reading in high school,which aims to develop students' thinking ability.In the teaching of reading,critical reading can develop students' thinking ability.Compared with literal reading,critical reading is a high level reading.It requires readers to read beyond the words,and make their own judgement and evaluation.Based on the theories of critical discourse analysis and interactive reading model,this study aims to investigate the current situation of senior three students' critical reading awareness and their critical reading ability,and to explore the relationship between students' awareness of critical reading and their critical reading ability.One hundred and twenty nine senior three students from Nanjiang High School in Sichuan province took part in this survey.The research data was collected from a questionnaire of students' critical reading awareness,a critical reading test and interviews with 6 students.After the collection of data,SPSS21.0 was adapted to analyze this data.Firstly,the descriptive analysis is conducted to investigate the current situation of senior three students' critical reading awareness and critical reading ability.Then,the independent sample t-test is used to see whether there exists gender difference.Finally,correlation analysis is conducted to explore the relationship between students' critical reading awareness and their critical reading ability.The findings were made after the analyses of the quantitative and qualitative data.First,students' awareness of critical reading is relatively weak.To put it in detail,students have stronger awareness in the aspects of interpretation and need analysis,and have weaker awareness in the aspects of evaluation and response to texts.Meanwhile,obvious difference exists between female students and male students.Female students have relatively stronger awareness in the aspect of interpreting meaning than male students.However,Male students are more aware of the use of evaluating strategy than female students.Second,students got low scores in the critical reading test,especially in the sections which require them to evaluate and respond to texts.In the aspect of responding to texts,male students' scores are obviously higher than female students.Third,there exists positive relationship between students' awareness of critical reading and their performance in critical reading test.Students who have stronger awareness of critical reading have better performance in critical reading test.The findings of the research can provide guidance for improving high school students' critical reading ability,which has certain theoretical and practical significance.