A Research On Application Of KWLS Model To English Reading Teaching In Junior High School

With the acceleration of knowledge updating,social developments put forward higher and higher requirements to learners.They need not only to have continuous learning interest and lifelong learning abilities,but also to master independent learning strategy.In order to meet these requirements,it is stated in English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2022 Edition)that English curriculum should cultivate students’ core competencies in the fields of language ability,cultural awareness,thinking quality and learning ability.Among them,the learning ability mainly concerns the ability of using learning strategies like metacognitive strategy and learning continuously.KWLS model is developed by Chinese and foreign scholars from KWL model that is proposed by American educationist Donna Ogle in 1986.In this model,“K” stands for “what I know”,“W” stands for “what I want to know”,“L” stands for “what I have learned”,and“S” stands for “what I still want to know & share what I have learned”.This teaching model emphasizes activation of students’ background knowledge,autonomous participation,cooperation,communication and sharing in learning process.Reviewing domestic and foreign literatures,there are relatively few researches on KWLS model.Among them,the quantity of researches conducted on high school students and college students is more than the researches conducted on middle school students.Research questions of these literatures mainly concern English reading comprehension and cognitive strategy uses,and there are relatively few researches on students’ metacognitive strategy uses.Therefore,this study mainly explores the influence of KWLS model on junior high school students’ learning interest,metacognitive strategy uses and reading scores.Based on schema theory,cognitive constructivism theory and metacognition theory,the author randomly selects two classes of grade eight of Luzhou No.15 Middle School in Sichuan Province as Experimental Class and Control Class.Each class has 50 students,and a total of 100 students work as research objects.KWLS model is adopted in Experimental Class,and existing teaching model is continued in Control Class for a three-months teaching experiment.Using test,questionnaire and interview as research instruments,and taking SPSS29.0 and Excel as tools to analyze data,the following three questions are studied:(1)What effects does the application of KWLS Model have on junior high school students’ English reading interest?(2)What effects does the application of KWLS Model have on junior high school students’ metacognitive strategy uses in English reading?(3)What effects does the application of KWLS model have on junior high school students’ English reading scores?By studying questions above,this study finds that:(1)KWLS model can fully activate students’ background knowledge and motivate them to actively participate in classroom,thus increase students’ reading interest;(2)Students can be guided to pay more attention to selfplanning in pre-reading,self-monitoring and self-adjusting while reading,and self-evaluating in post-reading by applying KWLS model,thereby their metacognitive strategy using abilities can be improved;(3)KWLS model can improve students’ reading scores to some extent as comprehensive results of stimulating students’ reading interest and helping students’ metacognitive strategy uses;(4)KWLS model has a greater effects on students who possess middle or higher English scores,while students with poor scores need longer time to adapt to this model.In addition,this study draws some enlightenments,such as it is necessary to pay attention to students’ background knowledge;activate students’ existing schemas;guide students to set in-depth questions to cultivate students’ higher-order thinking skills,etc.