An Experimental Study Of Reading Circle In English Reading Classrooms In A Senior High School

General Senior High School English Curriculum Standards(2020 revised edition)emphasizes that English reading should be thematic,situational and intensive.Under the background of the reform and development of the New Curriculum Standards,English reading teaching is concerned with cultivating students’ core literacy rather than just improving students’ reading ability.English reading literacy is one of the manifestations of the English core literacy,including reading ability and reading character.With the rise of the Reading Circle,it has gradually gained recognition and practice in China.Reading Circle is a student-centered teaching model in which students learn about an article or story in groups based on specific reading roles in independent and cooperative ways.This study conducts an experiment on Reading Circle in English reading teaching in Senior Two in order to answer the following questions:1.What is the effect of Reading Circle on senior high school students’ English reading achievement?2.What is the effect of Reading Circle on senior high school students’ English reading literacy?This study takes 92 students of Senior Two as the research subjects in Qapqal Sibo Autonomous County,Xinjiang.Both the Experimental Class(EC)and Control Class(CC)involve 46 students.Before the experiment,the EC and CC take a pre-test on their reading achievement as well as a pre-questionnaire on the current situation of English reading literacy.During the experiment,the EC and CC are both taught by the author and the same reading materials are utilized.The only difference is that the EC adopts Reading Circle while the CC adopts PWP(Pre-reading,While-reading,Post-reading)teaching model.After the experiment,the EC and CC take a post-test to demonstrate the changes in English reading achievement for the first research question.Meanwhile,a post-questionnaire is conducted in order to show the variation of English reading literacy for the second research question.Based on the data analysis of test papers and questionnaires,the results show that:1)Reading Circle is an effective English reading teaching model that can improve the English reading achievement of the students in Senior Two.There is no significant difference in reading achievement between the EC(M=16.167)and CC(M=16.687)(P=.562>0.05)before the experiment while there is a significant difference in reading achievement between the EC(M=19.229)and CC(M=16.333)(P=.000<0.05)after the experiment;2)Reading Circle plays a positive role in promoting the cultivation of English reading literacy of the students in Senior Two,including their reading ability and reading character.There is no significant difference in reading ability(P =.506>0.05)and reading character(P =.563>0.05)between the EC and CC before the experiment while there is a significant difference in reading ability(P=.000<0.01)and reading character(P=.000<0.01)between the EC and CC after the experiment.In conclusion,there are some pedagogical implications: 1)teachers could consolidate students’ reading roles in Reading Circle;2)teachers could shift the teaching spotlight from knowledge-based to literacy-oriented by paying equal attention to reading ability and reading character to cultivate students’ English reading literacy.