A Study On Cultivation Of English Key Competencies In Junior Middle School English Reading Teaching

Since English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2022 edition)was put forward,English key competencies have received extensive attention from English teachers and English education researchers.English key competencies include linguistic competence,cultural awareness,thinking quality and learning ability.English reading teaching is an important part,which provides opportunities to cultivate students’ key competencies.Recent concern in teaching English reading mostly focused on the teaching strategies in improving reading comprehension.However,how cultivation of key competencies are integrated in reading teaching is still under exploration.In order to examine how junior middle school English teacher perceive and implement key competencies in teaching reading,this study takes a questionnaire to 1333 participants from different regions and conducts classroom observations and interviews.The study produced the following results.Firstly,junior middle school English teachers have high perception and implementation of cultivating English key competencies,but the specific implementation of English key competencies in the classroom needs to be improved.Male teachers pay more attention to the cultivation of English key competencies than female teachers,and older teachers also pay more attention to cultivating students’ English key competencies than the young teachers.Teachers from Grade 7 and Grade 9 pay more attention to cultivating English key competencies than teachers from Grade 8.In regular classes,teachers are more inclined to the cultivation of linguistic competence,and the cultivation of cultural awareness needs to be improved.In open classes,teachers will pay more attention to the comprehensive cultivation of students’ English key competencies.Secondly,as for teachers’ cultivation of linguistic competence,teachers focus more on the lexical knowledge,and grammar knowledge,but they pay less attention to the phonetic knowledge.Thirdly,as for teachers’ cultivation of cultural awareness,teachers can expand the culture knowledge,but they ignore guiding students to compare cultural differences.Fourthly,as for teachers’ cultivation of thinking quality,teachers ask simple questions to trigger students’ thinking,but the questions are superficial.Lastly,as for teachers’ cultivation of learning ability,most teachers guide students to gain main idea from fast reading,gain detail information from careful reading,but they pay less attention to the learning habits such as preview habits and review habits.And student have fewer opportunities to have group work.According to the research results,there are some implications:Firstly,the government should improve the English examination system and reduce the difficulty of English examinations.Secondly,schools should provide more opportunities in professional training in the teaching of reading,add special reading courses and school-based textbooks.Finally,teachers should improve their pedagogical knowledge,and design diverse activities that can motivate students,and cultivating students’ English key competencies comprehensively.