An Experimental Study Of "Reading Circle" In Junior Middle School English Reading Teaching

With the introduction and promotion of compulsory curriculum standards and core literacy,English reading is not only a source to acquire language and cultural knowledge for students,but also a learning activity to develop students’ language knowledge and cultivate social emotions.However,in real teaching context,because students lack of interest in English learning,so it brings students a sense of anxiety.Most of them hold passive learning attitude of solving fixed questions.The Reading Circle evolved from the book sharing meeting in the 1980 s to the “literature circle”.The teaching procedure is quite different from the conventional teaching.It is a reading activity centered on the role tasks of members in the reading circle and the independent reading of text materials.The activities among the members in the reading circle can improve the reading character and achievement.Based on the study of mother tongue,reading circle is gradually introduced into the teaching of extracurricular reading of college English learning and senior high school English now.This research based on the cooperative learning theory and constructivism theory,upon a detailed understanding of the current situation of English reading teaching at home and aboard,according to the research the and theoretical system of Reading Circle model.The author applied the reading circle teaching mode to the eighth grade of a middle school in Yueyang city,where the author teaches,and put forward the following questions of this research:(1)Can reading circle activities improve junior middle school students’ attitude towards English reading and stimulate their interest in reading?(2)Can Reading Circle activities increase English reading comprehension’ scores of junior middle school students and improve their English reading comprehension ability? The research students selected two parallel classes taught by the author,a total of 102 students were divided into experimental class and control class.The entire teaching implementation lasted about three months.Starting from the reading’preparation,on the basis of the selection on reading materials,the allocation of reading roles and tasks,the independent reading and completion of task cards,the presentation of reading task with reading circle,the summary and evaluation of activities,two rounds of reading circle teaching are carried out.The experimental data are collected by questionnaire survey,test and experiment,and the software SPSS22.0 is used to analyze the experimental data.The study shows that the application of Reading Circle in junior middle school English reading teaching can effectively improve students’ reading attitude and motivation,stimulate their reading interest.In addition,Reading Circle helps students form good learning habits.increase their reading comprehension scores to a certain extent through the reading,thinking,contact,sharing and evaluation of reading texts by different roles in the reading circle,students’ abilities of summarizing the main idea and finding details have a tendency to improve,it further shows that English reading comprehension ability has also been improved.