Application Of SOLO Taxonomy To English Reading Teaching In Senior High School

Under the influence of the new curriculum reform,reading teaching has increasingly emphasized the importance of “Integrating Teaching-Learning-Assessment”(ITLA).The newly revised English Curriculum Standards for General High School(2017 Edition)emphasizes that teaching,learning and assessment are a trinity,and that assessment is not isolated,but continuously permeates the whole teaching process.Teaching needs formative assessment,not summative assessment.To achieve this goal,teachers need to maximize the role of assessment in teaching and learning.There is a need for an assessment tool in English language teaching that can be used throughout the teaching process.SOLO taxonomy can be used in the whole teaching process.The SOLO taxonomy’s view “observation of learning outcomes to determine students’ level of thinking in the learning process” is similar to ITLA.Both emphasize that assessment is generated in the process of teaching and learning,and that good final assessment should be based on formative assessment.The SOLO taxonomy(the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome)was proposed by Professor Biggs in 1982.Based on the observation of students learning problems in response to open-ended questions,he classified students’ learning outcomes into five levels from low to high.Students’ thinking ability is judged by the quality of their answers to the questions,not whether they are close to the standard answers.SOLO taxonomy has been applied to English reading teaching since its introduction to China in the 1990 s.SOLO taxonomy can effectively focus on students’ thinking development from open-ended questions in reading and keep this observation throughout the process.The main purpose of this study is to try to apply the SOLO taxonomy to high school English reading teaching to explore the impact of SOLO taxonomy on students’ English reading.Three research questions are as follows:(1)What are the effects of SOLO taxonomy on English reading achievements of senior high school students?(2)What are the effects of SOLO taxonomy on English reading strategies of senior high school students?(3)What are senior high school students’ attitudes towards SOLO taxonomy in English reading?In order to solve these research problems,an experimental study on SOLO taxonomy was conducted in English reading teaching in senior two of a high school in Lanzhou.In the experiment,the experimental class received English reading teaching that integrated the SOLO taxonomy whereas the control class employed task-based language teaching.Firstly,before the experiment,both classes took a pre-test at the same time.The questionnaire was distributed to the experimental class before the experiment.Secondly,after the experiment,the experimental class conducted questionnaire to test the change of students’ reading strategies before and after the experiment,as well as an interview to test the attitude of students towards SOLO taxonomy on students’ English reading.Finally,both classes were administered the post-test simultaneously to investigate the difference of students’ performance before and after the experiment.After completing the experiment,the author used SPSS24.0 to collect and analyze the data,and the results of the study were derived from a combination of reading tests,questionnaire and interview.The results of the study showed that SOLO taxonomy has a facilitating effect on high school English teaching.Firstly,SOLO taxonomy can improve high school students’ reading achievements;secondly,SOLO taxonomy has a facilitating effect on students’ reading strategies;thirdly,on the whole,students have positive attitude towards SOLO taxonomy.They consider the SOLO taxonomy as a good tool to answer open-ended questions.