An Empirical Study Of Developing Students’ Critical Reading Ability In English Teaching In Senior High Schools

In recent years, we promote quality education, implement the new English curriculumreform, carry out teachers’ training and guide teachers to use the latest teaching theories andsupporting teaching methods. So the level of English education has achieved significantdevelopment on the whole in China. According to the requirement of the students’ readingability in senior high school English curriculum standards, the requirement of senior highschool students’ thinking ability developing, the requirement of College EntranceExamination Test and the requirement of senior high school students’ viability to adapt to themodern information society, we have got to develop the students’ critical thinking ability andthe students’ critical reading ability. The critical reading requires students to use criticalthinking to analyze, evaluate and judge the information carrier to really understand the text.Western countries put focus on developing the students’ critical reading ability. But now thegoal of reading teaching is to gain language knowledge and improve the percentage of correctquestions, going against the principle of developing the students’ reading skills, criticalthinking ability and critical reading ability. So this paper studies the strategies of developingthe students’ critical reading ability and the methods of implementing critical readingteaching to test the effect of critical reading teaching with the empirical method to offer someexperience for the current English teaching in senior high schools.On the basis of the constructivism theory and the critical discourse analysis theory, thispaper analyzes and sorts out of literatures and materials relevant to critical teaching ofreading, and the author carries out in-depth analysis of relevant literature, achieves a reallyunderstanding of the research status of the subject and claims necessity of carrying out thecritical reading teaching in senior high schools. The author selects a series of methods, suchas questionnaire, interview, experiment, testing and data analysis. After comprehensive searchand sorting out of literatures and materials relevant to critical teaching of reading, the authorcarries out in-depth analysis of relevant literature and achieves a thorough understanding ofthe research status quo of the subject. The author selects two normal classes taught by him,and conducts a comparative experiment by using the critical reading teaching method. In the process, students’ critical thinking ability is recorded and the whole teaching procedures aretraced. At the end of the semester, tests are given to the two classes for testing students’critical reading ability to compare the differences in their final test scores. At the same time,questionnaires and interviews are done for the purpose of gathering the students’ evaluationfor the critical teaching method for reading class. Finally, the author analyzes the results withcomputer software to achieve appreciate conclusion.The results show that students have been more interested in reading teaching and themethod causes students to acquire something from knowledge to knowledge and skills;Students improve the frequency of using the critical reading strategies, reading speed andreading accuracy; critical reading teaching is good for improving students’ critical thinkingability and critical reading ability; students are more content with critical teaching methodthan traditional teaching method.