Designing Classroom Activities for Senior English Reading: A Case Study from a High School in China

Reading class is one of the basic courses of English teaching, and activity design is an important tool for improving students' reading competence. The New English Curriculum highlights the subjectivity and initiative of students in English reading classes, so the design of activities in senior English reading class should be student-centered and achieve full advantage of these activities to improve students' reading ability. This study aims to investigate the status quo of activity design in senior English reading class, to explore the problems existing in the teachers' activity design, and to provide suggestions for effective reading activity design. This study, conducted at Jiangsu Province Zhenjiang No.1 High School, China, targeted ten teachers and fifty students from grade ten through questionnaires and interviews, and thirty classes were observed. Based on analysis of the qualitative and quantitative data, to effectively design reading activities and to promote the efficiency of English reading teaching, this research suggests a layered design of activities aimed at enhancing classroom participation and improving students' overall reading competence in English. This research offers insights into designing activities for senior English reading classes, emphasizing that each stage of reading requires activities tailored to its specific objectives. However, the limited number of participants in the study may impact the generalizability of the findings. In the future study, the targeted participants could be enlarged to increase the variety of data sources.