An Investigation Of Out-of-class Extensive Reading For English Majors

As one of the important ways of language learning, reading has been paid great attention to by linguists and language experts from home and abroad. Study on teaching reading has also been carried out in recent years. It is supportive that reading is quite efficient on improving language learning. However, how to improve reading ability as well as how to give full play to reading in learning has been focused and discussed for years by the linguists, educators and language learners. As we all know, a large amount of reading contributes a lot to English learning. This is because reading not only provides favorable learning environment for learners, which makes them expose to English vocabulary, grammar and syntax and so on, but also enriches their background knowledge of English spoken countries, such as politics, economics and culture etc. All these will lay the foundation for the later study.The paper is to investigate out-of-class extensive reading of English major students on Foreign Language Department at Changchun Taxation College. The ultimate goal of the study is to figure out whether English major students read a lot after class. The paper firstly gives a brief introduction to reading, and then talks about some factors affecting reading as well as how to promote reading development by reading outside of classroom. The purpose of the paper is to find an effective way to help and train students to read more and read better and achieve good results.To further understand out-of-class extensive reading of English major students, two instruments, questionnaire and interviews, are used in this paper to survey and analyze the data. It turns out considerably unexpected that the students, although English is their major and out-of-class extensive reading is believed to be indispensable in learning, read only a little in their free time. According to the results of the investigation, most students think their average time on out-of-class extensive reading is about one hour a week. As a result, it can be concluded by analyzing the data: 1. Out-of-class extensive reading of English major students is not quite satisfactory. Moreover autonomous reading ability is not improved in the process of reading. 2. Students'self-control is so weak that they seldom make a plan or use reading skills before and while reading, and hardly evaluate themselves after class. In addition, the students heavily depend on teacher's check and compulsory measures to accomplish out-of-class extensive reading. The time and energy on reading are extremely not enough. 3. Teachers are supposed to play active roles in guiding out-of-class extensive reading, instructing students according to their personal differences, reading strategies, material selection, and motivating positively students'reading enthusiasm. Furthermore, creating good learning atmosphere and trustworthy communication between teachers and students are necessary to encourage students'initiative and enthusiasm in improving their out-of-class extensive reading.In connection with investigating results, some suggestions and improvements are put forward at the end of the paper. As the paper only investigates part of students on the Foreign Language Department at Changchun Taxation College and the instrument of the investigation is rather simple, so it might be incomplete and limited to the conclusion and the teaching enlightenments. The investigation is still explorative. It is expecting that more related study and research can complement and meet the drawbacks of the paper.