A Survey Of The Situation Of College Non-English Majors' Extracurricular English Reading

Reading is one of the four skills of language learning, which is very important in English learning. Myriad reading is extraordinarily beneficial for improving English competence. Lots of experts abroad and domestic undoubtedly affirm the importance of large quantity of reading to second language acquisition and learning. Krashen (1985) argues that"comprehensible input"is one of the most important elements in language learning including extensive reading. Harmer (2000) believes that good reading materials can beneficially improve a student's writing ability, providing good examples to them. Meanwhile, reading provides good chances to study vocabulary, grammar, wording and phrasing etc., and accelerates the language acquisition. Many domestic linguists and scholars admit the importance of great amounts of reading to English learning. Listening and reading are two main ways to contact linguistic materials. And under the condition of our country, reading is the best way to contact linguistic materials. Great amount of reading take a lot of time, however the in-class time for students is very limited, so autonomous reading after class becomes the important guarantee to reading amount. Teachers also realize the importance of extracurricular reading. Recently some scholars and teachers have researched in aspects of situation of college students'extracurricular English reading and how to guide students to take extracurricular reading. The relevant research on the situation of college non-English majors'extracurricular reading in underdeveloped areas of west China is relatively few. To better know about and improve their teaching of after-class reading, the author had a survey on the situation of college non-English majors'extracurricular English reading in three universities in Guangxi.This research is mainly to answer the following three problems: (1) What is the interrelation of college non-English major students'extracurricular English reading and English reading proficiency? What factors are closely related to college students'English reading proficiency? (2) What are the differences of the arts students and the science students in extracurricular English reading? (3) What is the general situation of college students'extracurricular reading?To answer the above problems, the author investigated sophomores of non-English major from three representative universities in Guangxi and randomly selected a class of arts majors and a class of science majors in each university; one hundred and eighty six students were subjects in this research. By questionnaires, English reading proficiency test and interview to students, the author collected the data. The author had quantitative analysis on the data collected by questionnaire and reading proficiency test by SPSS13.0 and then had qualitative analysis to the outcomes of the interviews by classifying and summarizing them.The research results show: 1) As for the factors probably related to the effects of extracurricular English reading, extracurricular reading purpose and obstacle analysis are significantly correlated to reading proficiency value, while the function evaluation and ways of extracurricular reading are not significantly correlated to the English reading proficiency; 2) For the arts and the science students'extracurricular English reading, there are significant differences on the function evaluation of extracurricular English reading and the obstacle of extracurricular English reading; 3) The students, in general, have common understanding on the functions of extracurricular English reading. They have strong and clear purposes on taking extracurricular reading, but the reading obstacles exist in the process of taking extracurricular reading, and they seldom use various ways of reading after class. In addition, students read less and the reading scope is narrow with low quality and shallow depth, students'spontaneous reading is rather lacking and their reading way is inappropriate, the work done by administrative departments relatively less and teachers'participation in the guidance is not enough etc.After investigating and researching, we have a general understanding of the situation of non-English majors'extracurricular English reading in Guangxi's universities, which will help considerably in practice for teaching after-class reading, and help students take more effective extracurricular reading to improve their reading proficiency and competence. Certainly, because of the small sampling of this research limited in three universities in Guangxi, the research results are still explorative but not qualified to be popularized. As for the limitations of the research, we hope that more relevant researches will make up for them in future.