Young Adult Literature Reading Is An Effective Way For Creating Life Long Readers

YAL reading has been playing a very important role in English teaching field from middle school to college since the early 1970s in many foreign countries, such as the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.... It has not only brought up many young readers but created many YAL educators, scholars and theorists as well.This thesis first mainly discussed the YAL function for creating lifelong readers and how to teach YAL in classroom.The author chose Soter's new literary theories and used alternative approaches in her YAL teaching classroom. According to the students' age, interests, literary level and their experience world, the author put forward: (1) Tree ways for books selection (individual selection, groups selection, and teachers selection). (2) Three reading patterns (individual reading with self-selected books, groups reading with group-selected books and whole class experience with teacher-selected books). (3) Three reading time distribution. During the teaching period, teachers try to access literary text from one or more perspectives (reader, text, context and author' perspectives) for different teaching purposes, and focus most their attention on what the students' responses tell them rather than on what they do not tell them, from reader to text to reader. These approaches turned out to be effective and workable in textbook selection, teaching methods and monitoring the whole class.Soter used the alternative approaches in classroom and achieved her great goal— —creating lifelong readers. The author pursued this path in her classroom and also improved her students' reading interests and literacy abilities.Based on theoretical and successful teaching experiences study and a 3-year YAL teaching practice in person, the author believes that YAL reading is really an effective way for creating readers.But in China, besides CNU, few other schools have opened the curriculum. Why? This boiled down to the second main discussion of the thesis: YAL reading in China.The author did a lot of investigations such as questionnaires, individual interviews, open interviews, and consulted some curriculum documents in different schools, anddiscovered:(1) Test-taking education is above everything in present teaching field in China.(2) Some prejudices against YAL into English classroom.(3) A mysterious sense for English original works coming from students.(4) Some senior educators look down upon YAL.(5) Through studying and analyzing these statistics, the author understands why we haven't invited YAL into English classrooms extensively. Meanwhile, the author also finds that not all of the interviewees are against YAL. If we adjust our teaching ideas slightly, YAL would be a valuable school curricular resource.Thus comes the third point: the author tries to put forward a proposal-inviteYAL into English classroom extensively.If we do have the chance to open the course, what should we do to help students to be engaged in it? The author then put forward some suggestions.First, get rid of the prejudices against YAL and help students go out of the shadow of mysterious sense to English original books.Second, set a scaffold for students to learn to read from reading. Create a harmonious classroom atmosphere.Third, balance the relationship between the classic and YAL.Fourth, English teachers should read more books and develop a good reading habit. This is not only a simple way for promoting teachers' teaching level but also set an example for students.Five, literature appreciation should be in the first place, then analysis or criticism.The author's desire to influence patterns of why and how we teach YAL reading in classroom is reflected in the thesis.