A Study Of Input Hypothesis And Its Implications For EFL Reading Teaching

The target language input plays a significant role in the process and outcome of foreign language teaching and learning. And reading, as one main means of obtaining information and language knowledge, is one of the very important sources of language input in language learning. The study of how to make good use of this means of input and optimize the reading input is of great significance to our EFL teaching. One of the influential studies about input is Krashen's Input Hypothesis. It emphasized the importance of comprehensible input in foreign language learning. Although this hypothesis has received many attacks, it still has some values for foreign language teaching. This dissertation is mainly to study the significance of Input Hypothesis and its implications for EFL reading teaching. A questionnaire and an interview are used as the study instruments. The questionnaire is designed to investigate students'evaluation of their reading materials; their usual way of reading and after-class reading activities; and their evaluation of teacher's role in the EFL reading class. Then an interview among 16 subjects follows, which shows the detailed explanation of the answers to the questionnaire. And they also give their answers to the five semi-structured interview questions. The subjects are college students who are non-English majors in Chongqing University. The results show the present input situations in EFL reading. With the result of the investigation, some suggestions are given at the end of the dissertation. On what to teach in an EFL reading class, the paper suggests choosing the materials that include authentic English data, and cover various types of articles. And the content of the materials must fit students'English level and be interesting. Both linguistic and schematic knowledge should be taught. On how to teach, the dissertation argues that the reading input should be adequate both in quantity and quality. In the process, teachers can make use of the role of first language in helping reading and combining input and output.