Research On The Application Of Reading Circles To English Reading Teaching For College English Majors

English reading plays an important role in English learning,especially for English Majors in China,and the cultivation of reading ability is particularly important.However,there are different kinds of problems in the reading teaching.Different scholars have actively been trying the new teaching methods.Among many methods,“Reading Circle” teaching method has been widely concerned.In the teaching method of Reading Circle,the students take the group as the unit,and each person plays a certain role and completes the corresponding task,which is a real student-centered reading activity.Therefore,this study attempts to apply Reading Circle to the English reading teaching for English majors,aiming to answer the following three questions:Question 1: What are the effects of English reading teaching based on Reading Circles to college English majors’ reading attitudes?Question 2: What are the effects of English reading teaching based on Reading Circles to college English majors’ critical thinking skills?Question 3: What are the effects of English reading teaching based on Reading Circles to college English majors’ reading competence?This study uses questionnaires,tests and interviews to conduct a 4-month empirical study on two sophomore parallel classes of English Majors in Bohai University in Liaoning Province,with 30 students in each of the control class(Class 5)and the experimental class(Class 6).The traditional teaching method is used in the control class and the Reading Circle teaching method is used in the experimental class in the process of the experiment.The experimental class(EC)and the control class(CC)are taught by the same teacher,and the same reading materials and course time are adapted.After the experiment,SPSS 19.0 is used to analyze the data collected in the experiment quantitatively,and the interview data is transcribed for qualitative analysis.The results show that the reading attitudes of the students in the experimental class are improved in both emotional and behavioral dimensions,and there is no significant change in cognitive dimension after a semester of empirical research.The overall attitude tends to be positive.The critical thinking skills of the students in the experimental class is significantly improved.In addition,the students’ reading competence has been significantly improved.Although this study has some limitations,the experimental results can provide a feasible scheme for future reading teaching research.