Effects Of Critical Reading Teaching On English Reading Ability Of Senior Middle School Students

Critical reading stresses higher comprehension of the reading material.Critical readers are able to read the literal meaning and implied meaning of the text.In recent years,critical thinking has been concerned,and the development of students’ critical reading has become a research hotspot.Current researches on critical reading instruction has been carried out at the high school level,while studies only focused on the exploration of models as well as concepts and lack empirical research.In view of this,this study was guided by Critical Discourse Analysis,Constructivist Learning theory and Bloom’s Taxonomy of educational objectives,developing an empirical study of critical reading instruction for senior middle school students.Based on Flynn’s classification of critical reading strategies and the definition of reading comprehension ability in China Standards of English,the following two issues were explored:(1)What are the effects of critical reading teaching on the use of critical reading strategiesin senior middle school students?(2)What are the effects of critical reading teaching on senior middle school students’ English reading comprehension skills?The selected objects of the study were two intact classes in the first grade of a senior middle school in Yueyang,with a total number of 90 students.The experimental class implemented critical reading teaching,while the control class followed the conventional reading instruction method,last 16-week.Both classes will take pre-and post-reading comprehension tests,the experimental class was also given a questionnaire and an interview.Then,the data were analyzed in detail with the help of SPSS23.0 software.The study found:(1)Students in the experimental class were significantly more aware of the use of critical reading strategies,and there was a remarkable increase in the frequency of its use.The mastery of prediction and evaluation strategies was better than that of analysis and reasoning strategies.(2)Critical reading instruction boosted the reading comprehension ability of the experimental class,compared with the control class.Students in the experimental class showed greater improvement in identifying extracting,critiquing and evaluating information,but the magnitude of gain in generalizing and analyzing ability was not as pronounced as the first two dimensions.The results of this study provide references for enriching English reading teaching in senior middle school.However,there are some limitations in the study due to objective factors,such as small sample size,single genre of discourse.In future studies,the experimental sample should be more extensive and representative.A variety of genre articles should be selected,and modern information technology should be taken into consideration.