Study Of The Effectiveness Of The Authenticity Of The Materials In The Teaching Of English Reading

Given the importance of reading as a sociocultural skill in modern society, it is not surprising that discussions of how best to teach it have been surrounded by a great deal of theoretical and ideological debate. The selection of the English reading materials is the key to the improvement in reading efficiency, because the materials themselves are the chief factors which affect the students'interest in reading. Therefore, the study on the selection of reading materials in English teaching arouses general concern of researchers at home and abroad. Communicative Language Teaching emphasizes that the content of language teaching materials must be real and natural language; it advocates that, in reading, learners should read authentic materials aiming for obtaining content.To a certain extent, however, just as the teaching of second /foreign language reading, apart from literacy instruction, has escaped the rawness and positioning of these discussions, authentic materials, in English reading teaching, are actually used seldom, or not used authentically, or lack personal authentic involvement. Many English teachers in our country believe that authentic materials contain too many new words, complex structures, so original authentic materials are not fit for college English reading. Therefore, the empirical study, which verifies that whether it is feasible to use authentic materials in college English reading teaching in China, will be of practical significance for promoting college English reading teaching.Based on the theoretical rationale of Communicative Language Teaching and Input Hypothesis, the present empirical study has researched the positive effectiveness of authentic materials on college English reading teaching by employing the qualitative and quantitative approaches. According to the status quo of the present researches and the existing problems of authentic materials'application in English teaching, the author has proposed hypotheses: whether using authentic materials to teaching reading could improve students'reading proficiency, reading motivation, self-confidence and reading strategies?Before the experiment, the author had taken a prior-experiment. The results from the prior-experiment had reflected the problems to investigate, and then the experiment started. In the experiment, the subjects of the experimental group (EG) and the control group (CG) are non-English major freshmen from Gannan Normal University. They have joined the experiment for 12 weeks, with EG reading authentic materials and CG reading unauthentic materials. The quantitative data are collected through reading scores in exam dividing into classes (pre-test), reading scores in final exam (post-test) and Gliksman, Gardner & Smythe's MRQ (a self report questionnaire to evaluate the motivation for reading). And the qualitative data are collected through weekly book reports, interviews, and questionnaire on the students'attitudes and reading strategies. All the data collected from the experiment are analyzed by SPSS and Microsoft Office Excel to find out the effectiveness of authentic materials.The data of the pretest shows that there is no significant difference between the two groups'reading proficiency before the experiment. But after 12-week different materials reading, the experimental results revealed that the reading proficiency, reading motivation and reading strategies in the EG are improved obviously, which had verified and supported the former hypotheses. It could be concluded that authentic materials have positive effects on college English reading teaching. The author believes that the study will have important direct reference value for college English teachers, English reading materials designers, curricula developers and foreign language theory researchers, and it will be also of important theoretical value and practical significance for college English reading teaching and even the whole foreign language teaching.