A Study Of The Use Of Critical Reading Strategies By Senior High School English Learners

English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School(2017)stresses the development of students’ core competencies,in which thinking quality arouses widespread attention.As an important part of thinking quality,critical thinking can be cultivated via critical reading.Many researchers have studied how to improve students’ critical reading ability in English reading teaching from different aspects such as teaching models and teaching activities.However,few studies are focused on the students’ use of critical reading strategies in senior high school English reading.Since critical reading cannot be separated from the use of critical reading strategies,this research attempts to explore the use of them from the following eight dimensions: predicting and previewing strategy,annotating strategy,inferring strategy,summarizing strategy,questioning strategy,analyzing strategy,evaluating strategy and self-regulating strategy.Under the guidance of constructivism and schema theory,this research,choosing161 students and 4 English teachers in a high school in Yantai as research participants,intends to investigate two questions through questionnaire,classroom observation and interview:(1)What is the current situation of senior high school students’ use of critical reading strategies in English reading?(2)What are the factors influencing their use of critical reading strategies in English reading?Through the analysis of the results,the findings of this research are summarized as follows:(1)The current situation of students’ use of critical reading strategies in senior high school English reading is not satisfactory.The frequency of students’ use of predicting and previewing strategy,inferring strategy,self-regulating strategy,annotating strategy and analyzing strategy is at a middle level.Their use of summarizing strategy,questioning strategy and evaluating strategy is at a low level.(2)There are various factors influencing senior high students’ use of critical reading strategies in English reading.Firstly,their intrinsic reading motivation is not strong.Secondly,their linguistic competence is insufficient to support their critical reading.Thirdly,students’ accumulation of cultural background knowledge is inadequate.Fourthly,students didn’t receive enough professional instruction on critical reading strategies.Finally,the examoriented education and traditional teaching models also have a negative influence on students’ critical reading.