A Study Of Effects Of Project-based Learning On Senior High School Students’ English Reading Literacy

Reading has always been an indispensable part of English teaching in senior high school in China,which is one of the core competencies among listening,speaking,reading,writing and viewing as well as a crucial skill for learners to communicate with one another and obtain information.Therefore,it is one of the critical tasks to improve senior high school students’ reading ability.“Reading literacy” contains a more comprehensive and richer connotation: it not only covers “reading ability”,but also includes the comprehensive literacy required to promote individual participation in social activities and the development of the whole person,namely,reading character.However,on the whole,there are still some problems in English reading teaching in senior high school in China,resulting that many students are not interested in English reading,and can not improve their English reading ability.Therefore,there is an urgent need for a new and effective reading teaching method to improve students’ reading literacy.The Project-based Learning is a student-centered teaching method with project products as the carrier,which is a new comprehensive inquiry learning method advocated by the new curriculum reform.Based on this,this paper aims to combine Project-based Learning with English reading teaching in senior high school,and tries to explore the impact of Project-based Learning on senior high school students’ English reading literacy.This study took 94 students in two parallel classes in Senior Two in a middle school in Chongqing as the research objects,and adopted quasi-experimental method,questionnaire survey method and interview.Among them,the reading teaching based on Project-based Learning was carried out in the experimental class,while the control class adopted traditional teaching method.The author carefully analyzed and discussed the results of students’ reading test,questionnaire and interview before and after the teaching experiment,aiming to explore the following two main questions:(1)What are effects of PBL on senior high school students’ English reading ability?(2)What are effects of PBL on senior high school students’ English reading character,including reading motivation and reading attitude?SPSS26.0 was used to conduct independent sample t-test and paired sample t-test on all collected data,and then detailed analysis,discussion and interpretation were carried out.The final research results showed that:(1)Project-based Learning has a positive impact on senior high school students’ English reading ability.Specifically,Project-based Learning can effectively improve senior high school students’ English reading performance,and significantly improve the three dimensions of linguistic knowledge,reading comprehension and cultural awareness,but it has no significant impact on the development of students’ decoding ability.(2)Project-based Learning has a positive impact on the reading character of senior high school students.It has a significant improvement in both reading habits and reading experience.The interview results showed that students had a favourable attitude towards PBL,and they believed that Project-based Learning was helpful to English reading learning and enhanced their interest in English reading.This study enriches the theoretical framework and practice-based research on PBL,and provides many useful and valuable suggestions for senior high school English teachers at the front-line level.At the same time,it also grants prospects and enlightening significance for the relevant exploration and research on this field in the foreseeable future.