The Application Of "Literature Circles" Model In Junior Middle School English Reading Teaching

English reading plays a vital role in English teaching and learning.However,the traditional teacher-centered model has rooted deeply in junior middle school English reading class,which causes students' low English competence,no interest and passive learning attitude towards English reading.Faced with those problems,many experts at home and abroad have recognized the importance of the "Literature Circles" and devoted themselves to related researches.However,most of those researches in China mainly focus on college students,Chinese reading teaching and outside reading.There lack researches on the application of "Literature Circles" model in junior middle school English classrooms.Based upon the previous researches,this study tries to apply the "Literature Circles" model in English reading teaching to test whether it can help the students in junior middle schools improve their English reading competence.With the basis of Cooperative Learning Theory,Reader Response Theory and Input Hypothesis,this study aims to answer the following two questions:1.Is the "Literature Circles" model more effective than the Grammar-Translation model in junior middle school English reading teaching?2.In what aspects does the "Literature Circles" model influence students'English reading learning?The study took 72 students from two parallel classes of Grade 7 in a middle school in Heyuan as the subjects.The experiment was conducted in 3 months.The experimental class was taught in the "Literature Circles" model while the control class was taught in the traditional Grammar-Translation model.Six books from Good English 7 were chosen as the reading materials for EC while 96 reading passages from Spark English:Reading Comprehension Exercises for Grade Seven were selected for CC.Two questionnaires,three tests and an interview were applied to know the students' learning situation in English reading.In the process of applying the "Literature Circles" model in EC,students were asked to take part in different reading activities under the guidance of the teacher like answering related questions,reading classical fragments,retelling the stories,evaluating the books or the characters in the books,role-playing and debating.According to the data analysis in this study,it is found that the "Literature Circles"model is more effective than Grammar-Translation English reading teaching model in junior middle schools.And the "Literature Circles" model influences students'English reading learning in such aspects:English reading scores,total scores,reading attitude,reading motivation,reading skills,reading strategies,autonomous learning ability and cooperative learning ability.Some pedagogical implications are then offered in this study.Reading class should take students as main position and teachers as secondary position.Teachers are supposed to stimulate students' learning interest,design effective activities,instruct students to learn cooperatively and emphasize English reading strategies.However,there also remain some limitations in the research to be perfected.For example,the short duration of the experiment,the limited number and range of the participants as well as some other inevitable variables have affected the results of this study.