Action Research On Improving High School EFL Reading Instruction Based On Critical Reading Strategies

In the era of information explosion,it has become indispensable for every reader to have critical thinking ability to make reasonable judgments on the credibility of information.It is inevitable and crucial to teach critical reading and cultivate students' critical thinking ability.Critical reading requires readers to make use of predicting,analyzing,questioning,inferring,summarizing and evaluating and other critical reading strategies to achieve a deep understanding of the text.Actually,a lot of studies on critical reading pay more attention to the theory and its application in college.However,there are not enough specific methods and technical guidance for the teaching in senior high school.Therefore,this action research focuses on how to apply critical reading strategies to the English reading instruction effectively to improve students' reading ability.This action research aims to address the following research questions:1.In what ways can critical reading strategies be applied to English reading teaching?2.How do critical reading strategies help improve students' reading ability?3.What effects does critical reading strategies instruction have on students' reading interest and motivation?Based on the study of the literature,the author has taken two rounds of the action research,with 105 senior one students serving as research subjects and with reading tests,a questionnaire and interviews as research instruments.With the data collected and analyzed,major findings are as follows.To begin with,in order to explore the ways to apply critical reading strategies to English reading teaching,the author has concluded a reading teaching model with critical reading strategies.Meanwhile,the author has also tried and managed to combine the strategies with the four main types of reading questions and has achieved encouraging results.It has been proved that critical reading strategies can be effectively applied to the reading instruction in senior high school.Moreover,critical reading strategies can help to improve students' reading ability.Critical reading can liberate the thinking of students and activate them to understand the text comprehensively and eventually improve their reading ability.Furthermore,the reading instruction with critical reading strategies can make the class active and challenging,which tends to stimulate students' thirst for knowledge,encourage independent thinking,and arouse their motivation and interests in reading.Therefore,it is feasible to integrate critical reading strategies into English reading instruction to improve students' critical thinking and reading ability,on which basis,this study also provide some implications for English teaching.First of all,it is time for English teachers to have a positive attitude towards critical reading strategies and shift their teaching goals to the competence-oriented in accordance to the 2017 Curriculum.Moreover,English teachers are expected to renew their teaching methods,and allow students to be the real center of the class.Last but not least,because proper materials can better inspire thinking,teachers can expand the resource of reading for supplement and help students to enjoy the beauty of reading itself.Hence,this research is expected to make certain contributions to the EFL reading research and reading instruction.It is hoped that this research can provide some enlightenment about reading instruction theoretically and practically.