| Critical reading is a relatively new reading concept.It was proposed by British linguist Fowler in the late 1970 s.It began to receive extensive attention in the 1980 s,and domestic research in this field started in the 1990 s.However,as a high level reading,it hasn't been paid enough attention in English reading teaching in most senior middle schools.As a consequence,many high school students' critical reading ability(CRA)is not strong enough,or even in the absence state.Although some of the teachers have the awareness of cultivating students' critical reading ability,they find it difficult to find effective approaches and proper teaching model to achieve the goals.This research aims to figure out students' Critical Thinking Disposition(CTD),and explore whether the “211” classroom teaching model is helpful and effective to cultivate students' CRA.This research adopts the action research method and the research questions are determined as follows: What is the Critical Thinking Disposition of Senior One students in XX Middle School? Can students' CRA be improved by using the “211 classroom teaching model”? The 111 participants in this research come from two classes of Senior One,XX Middle School.The main experimental instruments include two questionnaires,three reading tests,two individual interviews with 17 students and the stimulated recalls of 6students.IIIThe entire action study lasted for 20 teaching weeks.In the first week,the pre-questionnaire was distributed and collected to figure out the CTD of the students;a pre-test was held to collect the data for later comparison.Besides,two interviews were given to get the information of the participants' reading backgrounds and their difficulty in reading test.In the tenth week,the author collected the scores from the reading comprehension of students in their midterm testing to know whether the participants' CRA had been improved or not.The first round research was finished in the first ten weeks,during which micro-adjustments were made every five weeks to get better results.The second round research was carried out from the eleventh to the twentieth week.Besides most of the methods and procedures employed in the first round,the author made some necessary adjustments.For example some of the participants were involved in the process of designing the learning plan.In the last week,a post-test was held and stimulated recalls were introduced in.In this study,the results were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed by using both the percentages and SPSS21.0 software.The author wrote and discussed the interviews and stimulated memory data.At the beginning of the study,the critical thinking tendency,especially,analyticity and critical thinking self-confidence of the first-grade students in XX middle school of was weak overall.After 20 weeks' training,there was a significant improvement.Secondly,the participants' CRA has improved in different degrees after the research,which proved that the “211" classroom teaching model is helpful and effective to cultivate students' CRA.Moreover,another finding that the students' English reading interest was promoted after the research was beyond my expectation.This study provides a certain reference for future research in this field.Given the effectiveness of the “211” classroom teaching model and the current situation of similar English teaching in the region,it is worthwhile to popularize this model.At the same time,the author made some suggestions for future researches.First of all,it is necessary to expand the researching time to ensure the participants to get enough practice and collect more data in the later researches.In addition,it is suggested that the reading articles written by English native speakers can be selected as extracurricular reading materials for students to freely read and share. |
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