Action Research On Question Design For English Critical Reading Instruction In Senior High Schools

As the new English Curriculum Standards for High Schools(Ministry of Education,2018)emphasizes the cultivation of core literacy,critical thinking development becomes increasingly important.Therefore,critical reading instruction is definitely imperative.Questions for reading instruction,if well designed,can guide students' thinking from lower to higher levels,and facilitate the formation of higher thinking abilities such as critical thinking.However,in our teaching practice,there exist many problems of the question design.In view of the above situation,based on Constructivism and Critical Discourse Analysis theory,this study,in the form of action research,aims to explore the following two questions: what are the strategies for teachers' question design and how can teachers' effective questions help improve students' critical reading and critical thinking ability? The researcher suggests teachers should design questions based on students' cognitive level,teaching objectives,critical reading skills and discourse analysis and apply them in the three reading stages.In pre-reading,teachers lead students to preview and predict the content as well as brainstorm to activate their thinking.In while-reading,students' thinking ability will be improved by annotating the important and difficult points,inferring the implicit information,analyzing the text organization,distinguishing facts and opinions and summarizing the main idea.In post-reading,teachers should guide students to appreciate the beauty of the language,question the authority of the text,evaluate the author's writing purpose and compare different cultures to develop their critical thinking ability.Through practising-reflecting-ajusting-repractising-perfecting-concluding,the researcher focuses on the questions in teaching,and improves them until satisfactory result is achieved.As the action research goes on,the researcher also reveals that teachers should pay more attention to the accurate interpretation of the text,a proper distribution of the display questions,inferential questions and evaluative questions,the thinking levels of the questions,the linking question chains to promote useful generations as well as students' questioning awareness,all of which can contribute to the development of critical thinking.Finally,through data collection and analysis,the researcher finds that students' comprehension,appreciation,and evaluation of a text is significantly improved after the implementation of improved question design.Accordingly,students' critical thinking ability is promoted as well.