Action Research On The Cultivation Of Logical Thinking In English Exposition Reading Teaching At Senior High Schools

The New Curriculum Standard for Senior High School English(2017)regards the cultivation of logical thinking as one of the significant objectives of English teaching in senior high school.Logical thinking is a thinking process that reveals the essence of things by means of concepts,judgements,and logical reasoning.And as an indispensable genre of English reading,exposition reading expresses knowledge to readers through the essential characteristics of objective things and the process of their occurrence and development.Therefore,more and more teachers and scholars pay attention to the cultivation of students' logical thinking ability in English exposition reading at senior high schools.However,teachers' interpretation and teaching of exposition reading lack high-efficiency and deep-seated logical thinking activities.Therefore,this study makes use of the view of English learning activity to carry out two rounds of action research,mainly research the cultivation of students' logical thinking ability in exposition.This study aims to explore the following three research questions:(1)What is the current situation of the cultivation of students' logical thinking ability in senior English exposition reading teaching?(2)To what extent will the English exposition reading teaching under the guidance of the view of English learning activity improve students' logical thinking ability?(3)In what aspects does English exposition reading teaching improve students' logical thinking ability?The researcher selects 44 students from a class of senior two in a middle school in Shandong Province as research subjects.Before the action research,through teachers' interview,students' questionnaires and students' pre-test of exposition reading score to understand the current situation of students' logical thinking ability.The author carries out two rounds of action research based on the view of English learning activity.In the first round of action research,the researcher designs and implements three types of teaching activities: learning and understanding activities,application and practice activities,migration and innovation activities.These activities mainly cultivate students' judgment ability,logical reasoning ability and generalization ability of logical thinking ability,while students' analysis ability still needs to be improved.In the second round of action research,the researcher pays more attention to develop students' analysis abilityand puts forward the following activities: guessing the meaning of words,referencing and predicting article development,and analyzing the author's writing intention based on theme and content.After two rounds of action research,the author interviews the students and conducts questionnaires again,and then completes the post-test of students' exposition reading.Finally,the researcher inputs the data collected through pre-test and post-test of exposition reading into SPSS19.0 for data statistics,analysis and discussion.The research results show that:(1)Teachers' understanding of exposition reading neglects multi-dimensional and in-depth interpretation.The commonly used teaching mode of PWP tends to be programmed.The students' overall consciousness of logical thinking is not strong,and they lack the analysis ability and generalization ability of logical thinking ability.(2)Through the presentation of the teaching case of two exposition reading,the English exposition teaching activities such as learning and understanding activities,application and practice activities,and migration and innovation activities can improve students' logical thinking ability to a certain extent,especially for middle-level students.(3)English exposition reading teaching can improve students' judgement ability,generalization ability,logical reasoning ability and analysis ability of logical thinking ability.The implications of this study for English teaching are as follows:(1)Teachers should update the traditional teaching concept of reading,from the view of English learning activity to design teaching activities in exposition.(2)Teachers should strengthen the deep-seated interpretation of exposition and improve their analysis ability,and supply extracurricular exposition reading materials for students to broaden their knowledge.(3)Teachers should design diversified exposition reading teaching activities for different groups of students.