An Action Research On Senior High School English Reading Teaching Based On Critical Thinking Ability Cultivation

It is proposed in English Curriculum Standard for General High Schools(2017 Edition Revised in 2020)that students should be cultivated in core literacy,namely,language ability,learning ability,cultural awareness and thinking quality,among which critical thinking ability is one of the core qualities of students’ thinking quality.In daily senior high school English teaching,teachers and students face the pressure of national college entrance examination.Therefore,the traditional English reading teaching in class mainly focuses on vocabulary usage and analysis of long and difficult sentences,which means students’ English learning mostly remains on the language knowledge without the practice of deep thinking.In recent years,how to effectively promote the cultivation of students’ critical thinking ability in English teaching has attracted wide attention in the academic community.Many scholars and experts have carried out a series of in-depth studies on it,and put forward corresponding critical models,teaching principles and strategies.This study mainly takes 48 students from a class in the second grade of a senior high school in Longyan,Fujian Province as research subjects.By means of questionnaires,interviews and reading level tests,the author conducts an action research on English reading teaching based on the cultivation of senior high school students’ critical thinking ability,which lasts nearly 4 months,aiming at promoting the development of students’ critical thinking ability and improvement of English reading teaching.The study mainly focuses on the following three questions:(1)How to integrate the cultivation of critical thinking ability into high school English reading teaching?(2)What is the impact of critical English reading teaching on developing critical thinking ability of senior high school students?(3)What is the impact of critical English reading teaching on the English reading level of senior high school students?Through questionnaires,interviews and tests,the author investigates the status quo of students’ critical thinking ability and English reading comprehension in the stage of pre-action research.Based on the data analysis,the author conducts two rounds of action research in which the cultivation of critical thinking ability is integrated into the regular English reading teaching.In the stage of pre-reading,while-reading and post-reading,different teaching activities are designed to promote students’ critical thinking ability.During the two rounds of action,SPSS26.0 and Excel are used to analyze the data collected.After two rounds of action,it is found that through critical English reading teaching,students’ critical thinking ability in eight dimensions have been improved to different extent.Among them,students have improved most significantly in truth-seeking,with the rest of dimensions ranking in order of analysis,resilience,cognitive maturity,openness,curiosity,justice and confidence.In addition,students’ English reading scores are also on the rise.Through the comparison of English reading performance among three tests,the accuracy rates of the four types of reading questions have been improved to different degrees,with the most significant improvement in the accuracy rate of questions of inference,followed by questions of details,questions of main idea and questions of word guessing.At the same time,the number of students in the low score group has reduced by half,and the number of students in the high and middle score groups has increased.In view of how to cultivate students’ critical thinking ability through critical reading teaching,the author puts forward the following suggestions: First,in pre-reading,teachers can make use of modern educational technology flexibly to arouse students’ curiosity and interest.Second,teachers can design “question chain” carefully to develop students’ analytical skills.Last,teachers can provide group discussion and other cooperative learning opportunities to train students’ evaluation ability.These activities can effectively combine the development of students’ critical thinking ability with English reading teaching in classes,not only enhancing students’ interest in learning English,their participation and motivation in class,but also guiding them to think deeply in reading and then develop their critical thinking ability.