| As mentioned in the English Curriculum Standard for Senior High Schools issued in2017,listening,speaking,reading,writing and watching are the five basic language skills that senior high school students need to master.Proficiency in reading is decisive for students to acquire language knowledge,cultivate and develop critical thinking,in order to help them form the core English competence.However,currently too much attention is still paid to an examination-oriented way in English reading teaching and learning in senior high schools,which put more focus on language rather than the cultivation of students’ reading performance and critical thinking.Therefore,it is urgent for teachers and researchers to address on how to cultivate students’ reading ability and critical thinking.In view of the existing problems in English reading teaching in senior high schools,the purpose of this study is to verify whether the problem-based learning can effectively improve students’ reading performance and critical thinking.In the research a teaching experiment lasting three and a half months and the critical thinking tendency scale were employed.In the teaching experiment,two classes with almost identical reading performance in the first grade of a senior high school in Ju County of Shandong Province were taken as the research subjects.One class was the experimental class in which the problem-based learning was applied to reading teaching,and another class was taken as the control class where the original teaching method was still used.At the beginning and end of the experiment,students are examined by the critical thinking tendency scale.The study discovers that the problem-based learning can not only improve students’ English reading performance,but also have a positive effect on the development of the students’ critical thinking.Finally,combined with this study,the author puts forward a series of suggestions for English reading teaching in senior high schools for reference. |
