Research On The Application Of Reading Circle In The Teaching Of English Reading In Rural Junior High Schools

Reading Circle,also known as literary circle,is an effective way to cultivate students' daily reading habits and have them enjoy reading with a focus on training students' critical thinking ability.The concrete steps are “reading – thinking –connecting –sharing– evaluating”.Through Reading Circle students are encouraged to take part in cooperative activities,play the role as organizers rather than traditional participants,which helps to develop their critical thinking of reading.Reading competence is regarded as the core quality of citizen's qualities,which has been a hot issue in academic field and received great attention.However,the serious problems found in rural English teaching are as follows.Firstly,it's a common phenomenon that students are unable to do effective reading and they have no interest in it.Secondly,they read little and don't develop a good reading habit,which leads to their lack of confidence.To solve these problems,this study carried out an experimental research on rural English reading teaching based on Reading Circle.Therefore,the purpose of this study is to explore the effective ways of teaching English reading and to change the current situation in rural junior high school,which aims to raise students' self-confidence,form a life-long reading character and improve their reading quality.The samples of this study are two parallel classes of the eighth grade in a rural junior high school in northern Jiangsu Province.The three research questions are as follows:(1)Is Reading Circle beneficial to the formation of students' good reading character?(2)Does the Reading Circle help develop students' critical thinking?(3)Does the Reading Circle promote students' integrated language skills? This study mainly adopts the combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods,including experiment,literature review,investigation and interview.First,the study explains the teaching model of Reading Circle through the literature review,and expounds the application process of Reading Circle in English reading course through two teaching experimental cases of fiction-text and nonfiction-text.The experiment inthe Experimental Class and the Control Class lasted one semester.The data of the pre-test and the post-test were analyzed in depth.Based on the results of data analysis,reading Circle is conducive to developing a good reading habit.Secondly,the teaching model of Reading Circle is beneficial to developing students' critical thinking.Thirdly,reading teaching based on Reading Circle can promote students' integrated language skills,such as vocabulary,reading,writing and so on.Fourthly,it ensures students an active reading experience through the involvement of Reading Circle and the process of cooperation,inquiry and communication.Lastly,both fiction reading material and non-fiction reading material can be used in Reading Circle.Based on the experimental results,the conclusions of this study are that Reading Circle can help develop students' reading character,benefit the development of students' critical thinking and promote students' integrated language skills.The teaching implications of this study are as follows:(1)In the process of cultivating students' reading quality,teachers themselves need to possess high reading quality;(2)Teachers should be good at learning with critical thinking,reforming classroom teaching with the goal of the whole person;(3)Teachers should pay attention to the development of students at different levels,focusing on improving students' thinking ability;(4)Teachers should establish multiple evaluation mechanism to encourage students to learn English.(5)Reading teaching and writing teaching should be integrated organically;(6)Choosing the right texts is one of the key steps of carrying out Reading Circle successful.