Beyond Surface Reading: Mapping Deep Learning Research in Junior Secondary English under the Core Competency Perspective

Abstract

The 2025 revised edition of the Compulsory Education English Curriculum Standards(2022 Edition), hereafter referred to as the New Curriculum Standards, places core competencies at the center of the overall goals of English education and calls for junior secondary English reading instruction to move beyond a narrow model of language-knowledge training. Instead, reading instruction is expected to promote discourse-based meaning construction, the development of thinking,and transferable language use. Taking studies on deep learning in junior secondary English reading published between 2021 and 2026 as its main object of analysis, this paper adopts thematic retrieval, source-text verification, and thematic review to examine the development of this field over the past five years. The review shows that existing studies have effectively promoted a shift in junior secondary English reading instruction from superficial extraction of textual information to deeper construction of discourse meaning. Nevertheless, the field still faces several challenges,including unclear definitions of key concepts,insufficient alignment between teaching strategies and the developmental characteristics of junior secondary learners, a lack of empirical classroom evidence,and underdeveloped assessment systems and tools. This paper argues that deep learning in junior secondary English reading should take discourse themes as its central anchor, textual evidence as the basis for reasoning,cognitive scaffolding as continuous learning support,and authentic tasks as the endpoint of language transfer. Future research should further deepen the construction of internal mechanisms,accumulate classroom-based evidence, accelerate the development of specialized assessment tools, and regulate the boundaries of intelligent technologies in teaching contexts.