Action Research On Teaching Question Chains In English Reading For Senior Grades In Primary School

Reading is a thinking-based activity,the quality of thinking is necessary for developing students’ comprehensive language skills.However,in primary school English reading teaching,teachers overstress vocabulary and syntax interpretation and overlook the importance of digging deeply into the context and developing students’ thinking qualities.Question chain is important for stimulating students’ thoughts,helping them to enrich their understanding in a progressive thinking and exploration.Question-chain teaching technique can promote students’ language output and learning,also develop thinking skills.Based on Bloom’s taxonomy and the problem continuum theory,this study discuss how to design and use question-chain technique in English reading teaching through action research.It investigates how question chain technique can improve students’ thinking engagement in the English reading lesson,thereby addressing the problem of shallow-questioning and paying little attention to students’ thinking qualities.To verify what has mentioned previously,this study firstly summarizes the current research status of question-chain teaching technique and defines the core concepts and theoretical foundations.Secondly,the characteristics and the design steps of question chain has been analyzed through relevant teaching cases.Then,action research lasting two months was conducted to verify the effectiveness of question chain in promoting students’ thinking engagement in English reading through questionnaire and classroom observation;the design plan of question-chain teaching technique was revised and improved through classroom observation and teacher interview;the research reflections and summaries were accomplished.After two rounds of action research,the following conclusions were drawn as follows:teachers should design question chains based on the main question and stick to the design and implementing steps of the question-chain teaching technique;this technique promotes students’ thinking engagement and develops students’ lower-order thinking and higher-order thinking skills simultaneously.Finally,some insights and suggestions for question-chain teaching technique in English reading are concluded.