A Qualitative Research Into Chinese English Learners' Reading Of A Short English Story Based On Reader-response Theory

In our English reading classroom instruction, the teachers focus almost exclusively on language and explanations of texts but overlook the individuals. The meaning of texts is not "negotiated" but imposed on readers. In order to find ways to solve this problem, this study uses reader-response theory as the basic conceptual framework and attempts to combines schema theory and theory of affective comprehension to explore how Chinese English learners read a short English story. This study uses the qualitative research methodology. Twelve relatively high English level participants took part in the study. British writer Saki's short story The Open Window is chose as the reading material. The data are collected through the interview with the participants and descriptive coding, open coding and axial coding are applied to analyze data. The research finds: The participants are tolerant to ambiguity in meaning; The "minute details" are significant for participants to comprehend the text; The salient or enduring schemas will be activated and play a role in the text-level comprehension; The literary genre schemas play a more prominent role for the high-level Chinese English learners in reading short stories; Most of the participants don't read for pleasure; The successful readers are more tolerable to the lack of background information. Based on the findings, the study gives suggestions to teach various types of English learners and offers suggestions to build response-oriented English reading classes and how to improve EFL reading instruction.