An Empirical Study On The Application Of Sustained Silent Reading To Senior Students’ Extracurricular English Reading

Reading is an important way to get information and to learn.Learners can improve their English capability by reading.However,the author finds that many senior school students don’t have good reading habit.They seldom do extra-curricular English reading.Many reading methods can be used to encourage senior students to do English reading.In this research,the author introduces how to do sustained silent reading(SSR)in senior school.Krashen and other scholars have done many researches on SSR.On the basis of the researches,the study applies sustained silent reading to English extra-curricular reading,trying to answer these questions:(1)What are the problems that exist in English reading in Senior School? Can sustained silent reading solve these problems?(2)What methods can teachers adopt to guide students on sustained silent reading?(3)How does sustained silent reading influence senior 1 students’ reading?The research was implemented among 36 students from Class Three,Senior One of the High School affiliated to Jiangsu Normal University.They did sustained silent reading for 12 weeks.After analyzing the pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire,pre-test and posttest and the interview with the instruments SPSS and Excel,the author made the following conclusions:First,senior students face the problems such as low interests,little reading time,low frequency of reading,lack of reading materials and so on when they do extracurricular English reading.Sustained silent reading can increase senior students’ reading interests.Students and teachers read together during sustained silent reading time,thus will ensure the time and frequency of reading.Besides,as students read more,their reading speed is faster.They are more proficient at the usage of reading skills.Second,teachers can adopt some method to help students to read better.Students are immersed in reading in the quiet and comfortable atmosphere.Teachers should provide rich reading materials for the students.To make sustained silent reading more effective,teachers and students can share some background knowledge and their ideas about the reading materials.Third,sustained silent reading can improve senior students’ reading competence.Sustained silent reading can increase students’ reading interests and reading competence.It gives students a better experience in reading.The results of the research show that senior students perform better in extracurricular reading after sustained silent reading.However,there are some limitations in this study.The study lasted for a short period of time,at the same time,reading materials and study subjects were not rich enough.These all together limited the applicability of the study.