The Application Of Jigsaw Method To EFL Reading Teaching In Senior High Schools

Reading teaching accounts for a large proportion in Senior High School English teaching in China.Many scholars have studied English reading teaching strategies.They are taking reforming by reading teaching,which aims at changing the classroom atmosphere of reading class,stimulating students' reading interest and improving students' reading ability.However,most Senior High School English reading classes are still teacher-centered.It means that students are passive and the class is boring.Therefore,how to better organize and transform English reading teaching activities in Senior High School has become a quite important question for Chinese English education scholars and teachers as well.In Guangzhou,most Senior High Schools use the English textbooks published by PEP,in which the passages are quite long and are of narration,argumentation and exposition.Reading becomes a tough task for students,which makes English class duller.Based on the above situation,the author of the thesis made use of jigsaw teaching to have reform in two English classes in a Senior High School in Tian He district,Guangzhou,for about two months.They are two regular classes.One is the control class and the other is the experimental class.While the experimental class was undertaken with the jigsaw teaching strategy,in the control class,the traditional strategy of teaching was carried out.The aim of the research is to check whether the jigsaw teaching in reading classes is useful or not.The major following two problems were carried out in the experiment:(1)How does the jigsaw teaching method applied to the high school English reading teaching class affect students' interest in learning?(2)How does the jigsaw teaching method applied to the high school English reading teaching class affect students' reading ability?This study analyzed students' reading interest and competence by interviews,questionnaires,observation and reading test data,and found out that:(1)Because of the cooperation and communication activities between the original groups and expert groups,the jigsaw method increases student's interest in English reading passages.(2)In accordance with the data and results of the pre-test and post-test,the jigsaw method improves Senior High School students' English reading ability.According to the above results,the author considers that the application of jigsaw method in English reading classes is suitable for students in Senior High Schools.It is worthpopularizing in English reading class of Senior High School.