A Study On The Application Of Literature Circles To English Reading Teaching In Senior High School

English Curriculum Standard for Ordinary Senior High School(2017)emphasizes that in English reading teaching,teachers should help students know how to learn through experiencing autonomous learning,cooperative learning and inquiry learning.However,there are still many problems existing in current reading teaching: too much attention paid to the explanation of language points in reading materials,students’ passive participation in reading and lack of opportunities for independent thinking and exploration.How to cultivate students’ autonomous reading abilities and improve their reading achievements is one of the greatest concerns of educators.Literature Circles,combining autonomous learning,cooperative learning and inquiry learning together,emphasizes students’ in-depth interpretation of texts,and may give students the opportunity to actively participate in reading.Hence,this research attempts to explore how to apply Literature Circles to senior high school English reading teaching to improve the status quo of reading teaching and enhance students’ autonomous reading abilities and reading achievements.In the present research,two parallel classes from grade 11 of a senior high school in Baoding,Hebei Province are selected as the research subjects,with 45 students in each class.In the 12-week experimental study,Literature Circles is adopted in the experimental class for reading teaching,and PWP(pre-reading,while-reading,and post-reading)model is applied in the control class at the same time.Questionnaires,tests and an interview are used to answer the following research questions: 1.What is the impact of Literature Circles on senior high school students’ autonomous reading abilities? 2.What is the impact of Literature Circles on senior high school students’ reading achievements?The research results reveal that Literature Circles can significantly improve students’ autonomous reading abilities and reading achievements,especially in the aspects of guessing word meaning,drawing inference,and grasping main idea.Based on the experimental process and results,some suggestions on how to effectively apply Literature Circles to teach reading practice are also provided to senior high school English teachers: the changes of teachers’ role in Literature Circle and the efficiency of the students’ discussion should be given enough attention;and before the formal implementation,relevant training should be provided for the students to help them get familiar with the role tasks in Literature Circles.