The Effects Of Extensive English Reading And Enhanced Reading Tasks On Junior High School Students' Vocabulary Acquisition

Extensive English reading practice is thought to help to enlarge students' vocabulary,cultivate a good reading habit,supplement regular language teaching and to improve students' overall language competence.In recent years,extensive reading practice and its effect have,again,drawn increasing attention from education experts and school teachers.But there are not many previous empirical researches at home regarding extensive reading,especially the ones targeting junior high school students.Meanwhile,as shown in several surveys,most students have not yet done enough extensive reading to reach the goal set by the National Curriculum Standards.Based on which,the author decides to take extensive reading as the topic and to adopt empirical methods in order to figure out the effect extensive English reading has on vocabulary acquisition as well as the relationship between extensive reading tasks and language competence and further elaborates on why it is of great importance to include extensive reading class in the school curriculum.The thesis adopts an empirical approach which includes experimental method and questionnaires.107 junior school students are selected as the research subjects.They are divided into three groups,namely two experimental groups and one control group(n=29).The experimental groups are further divided into Extensive Reading Only Group(n=34)and Extensive Reading + Reading Tasks Group(n=44),which are named as unenhanced and enhanced extensive reading groups respectively.The experiment last two months.Five pre-tests were conducted before each extensive reading session in order to make sure all the research subjects start out on a similar level.5 immediate post-tests were done after each extensive reading session to find out the short-term effects of the extensive reading treatment and each enhanced reading treatment.In order to test out the long-term effects of the extensive reading treatment and each enhanced reading treatment,1 delayed post-test is designed and finished at the end of the semester.The results of the experiment are summarized as the following.Students from the unenhanced group can gain vocabulary knowledge from extensive-reading-only treatment but the effect will not last long,while students from the enhanced group can gain more vocabulary knowledge from extensive reading and finishing different reading tasks and the effect will last longer.In addition,the correlation between the students' vocabulary test scores and their final English exam scores at school was analyzed by SPSS and it seems that students who benefit from the extensive reading can usually do well in English exams.The questionnaire results show us that most students enjoyed extensive English reading practice and are willing to do more.The thesis offers firm evidence of the benefits of extensive reading class and a demonstration of how it can be done,hoping that extensive English reading can be included into school syllabus in future language class.