A Study On Critical Reading In English Reading Instruction In Junior High School

Reading is a complex cognitive activity.In the reading process,readers play an active role in developing and recreating the reading text based on their understanding of it.Therefore,a complete reading process should include comprehensive reading and critical reading.Implementing critical reading in English in junior high school complies with the requirements of key competences of English discipline and is also a requirement of adapting to the development of times and students' thinking abilities,which can promote the students' critical thinking skills and enhance their ability of deep understanding of reading texts.So what is critical reading?How do we carry out it in English reading instruction in junior high school?In order to solve these problems,we need to investigate the current situation of the critical reading instruction to gather information,and use it as a reference to put forward the possible ways to teach critical reading in junior high school.Therefore,the main research contents of this study include three aspects:Firstly,the connotation and performance characteristics of critical reading are defined in this study.Secondly,the investigation of the current critical teaching status is carried out in junior high school.And lastly,based on the data of the survey,the appropriate implementation plan of the critical reading instruction will be put forward in the end.The investigation results indicate:(1)Generally,teachers pay much attention to the cultivation of students' reading skills,however,most of which are related to the low-level thinking skills such as memorizing and comprehending,lacking the higher-order thinking skills.(2)The contents of the reading text are not interpreted deeply enough for students to learn,which leads to students' superficial understanding of the texts.(3)The criticizing and questioning activities are hardly seen in the reading class,while teachers pay more attention to the texts' being understood accurately instead of being analyzed or evaluated critically.And it can also be seen from the interview that most teachers have no or little conception of what critical reading is,so it isn't common for teachers to carry out the critical reading in English reading instruction.Based on the above investigation results,the following teaching strategies are proposed:At first,as for the teachers themselves,they are suggested to raise their awareness of critical thinking and change their concepts of reading instruction.Secondly,as for the students,it is proposed that teachers should create suitable classroom atmosphere for critical reading and encourage students to think critically.Then,from the specific teaching operation level,teachers are expected to study the texts from multiple perspectives and design the type of questions that are thought-provoking.Lastly,from the evaluation's perspective,teachers should change their concept of reading evaluation in order to promote the implementation of critical reading.What's more,with a typical and well-designed teaching case to present the detailed teaching process,the author hope to provide valuable guidance and help for the implementation of critical reading in junior high school.