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

Reading teaching is a critical part in English teaching of senior high school,and it is the main way to obtain language input,during which learners could gain language knowledge,develop multiple thinking,and advance reading skills and learning ability.However,for a long time,English reading teaching only focuses on the superficial understanding of text,including acquire basic information,learning important vocabulary and grammar.Therefore,students are forced to be passive learners,which makes it difficult for them to realize the pleasure of reading.Meantime,their thinking ability cannot be trained.In fact,students’ reading process should not be confined to the vocabulary and grammar learning.On the contrary,it is an active,interactive and creative process.DRTA is proposed by American scholars Carol N.Dixon and Denice D.Nessel(1992),namely “Directed Reading Thinking Activity”.They claim that reading is a process of learners’ active construction of meaning,in the process of which learners initially master the meaning of the text,and then make logical predictions under the guidance of teachers,so as to reconstruct the meaning of things,life and world.Besides,it covers three teaching steps,including prediction,reading and rethinking.Based on the understanding and analysis of DRTA,the researcher applied the DRTA to English reading teaching in a senior high school to explore whether learners’ thinking quality and reading comprehension ability could be promoted.Two parallel classes in grade two of Rongchang Senior High School in Yuxian were chosen as the experimental subjects,among which Class 2020 was the control class and the traditional teaching method was used in English reading teaching,while Class 2019 was selected as the experimental class and the DRTA was adopted on the premise of having same teaching period,teaching materials and instructor.The research questions are as follows:(1)What effect does DRTA have on students’ thinking quality?(2)What effect does DRTA possess on learners’ reading comprehension ability?(3)What effect does DRTA produce on students’ reading achievements?Questionnaire,test and interview were used to collect data,whose results have been analyzed by SPSS 23.0,including independent sample t test and paired sample t test.Finally,the results indicated that learners’ thinking quality could be promoted,learners’ reading comprehension ability could be enhanced,and their reading achievements could be improved.Therefore,DRTA could be applied into the English reading teaching to improve the efficiency of reading teaching and learning.