An Investigation Into The Application Of Critical Reading Strategies In English Reading Of Senior High School

Listening, speaking, reading and writing are considered to be the basic skills in foreign language learning. Reading as one kind of language input, is regarded as a very important skill in English teaching. More and more teachers and scholars contribute to the study on reading teaching propose a variety of methods of teaching and effective reading strategies. With the development of language teaching, higher requirement for learners has been put forwards. Students should not only master the general reading strategies, but should also know critical reading strategies and apply them in the reading process. Critical reading is considered to be a high level of reading, however there are still many problems in high school English teaching of China. Both domestic and foreign scholars have studied the critical reading, but the investigation of the current situation of the teaching and using of critical reading strategies in senior high school of China is still in the exploratory stage.The paper is aimed at investigating the situation of the application of critical reading strategies by teachers and students in senior high school, including teachers’ teaching and students’ using. The 200 research subjects are chosen from Grade 2 in Xinglong NO.1 Middle School in Hebei province. The data are collected by questionnaires and interviews and dealt with Software SPSS 17, and analysis and discussion are presented according to the research data.Through analyzing the quantitative and qualitative data, the research obtains the findings as follows:(1) Both teachers and students have relatively weak awareness of teaching and using critical reading strategy, and their results are almost consistent. Teachers teach previewing and annotating strategies more consciously, so students can use them more consciously. Other strategies are often neglected by the teachers and students, especially summarizing and evaluating strategies.(2) There is no significant difference between students in parallel class and students in the key class in awareness of using critical reading strategies.(3) In gender difference, boys have stronger awareness in using questioning, evaluating strategies than girls to some degree. Girls have stronger awareness in using annotating strategy than boys.(4) The frequency differs in teaching each of the critical reading strategies for teachers.(5) The frequency differs in using each of the critical reading strategies for students.The paper has also made some suggestions for the English reading teaching by encouraging teachers and students to change their concept and optimize their reading teaching method, to explore a better way of English reading teaching.