An Empirical Study On English Newspaper Reading Teaching In Senior High School

It is well known that reading is one of the basic skills and plays a very pivotal role in English learning and teaching, and it is the main access to acquiring information. Therefore, to cultivate students'reading abilities is an important task in high schools, since high school is the crucial period to form solid foundations for the students'future academic and occupational success. The New English Curriculum in senior high school indicates the students'reading ability and their reading amount are required much higher than before, and one of the requirements is they should be capable of reading English newspapers or magazines after their three-year study. However, the teacher-centered and grammar-oriented teaching methods consist in English reading teaching and learning for a long time in China. Moreover, English teaching mainly depends on the textbook which contains less information and the limited vocabulary. According to the New Curriculum, the rich teaching resources such as audio-media, newspapers and magazines and the internet should be used adequately to expand the methods of learning and using English. And teachers should also change the traditional methods of teaching and learning, and enrich the class by organizing various teaching activities and creating the effective teaching models.In recent years, some English teachers in secondary schools have begun to teach reading by English newspapers which are valuable teaching resources as a supplement of English reading teaching. Compared with the textbook, English newspaper has many special features such as the latest contents, various articles and interesting stories. It is close to life and also combines knowledge with fun. Therefore, applying newspapers as materials in reading class can stimulate the students'enthusiasm and interests, enrich the teaching resources and widen teaching methods, and enhance the students'reading comprehension abilities eventually.In this thesis, the author applied English newspapers in reading teaching in senior high school so as to test whether the students'reading ability can be improved through English newspaper reading training. The experiment was carried out in two parallel classes in Senior Two, including fifty students in each class and it lasted about four months. Before the experiment, the two classes were almost at the same level according to the results of the monthly exam, and one was appointed as the experimental class, and the other as the control class. The experimental group employed 21st Century Teens (Senior Edition) as their additional reading materials in reading class and they also received some different teaching methods supplied by the teacher. And the control group still had classes in a conventional way. In the experiment, the process of the newspaper reading teaching was divided into three stages: pre-reading stage, while-reading stage and post-reading stage. And the author also employed two teaching models in reading: in class newspaper reading teaching and after-class newspaper reading teaching. Based on the data analysis and the results of the experiment, it was proved that English newspaper reading training can enhance students'overall reading proficiency, and the teaching methods through newspaper instruction also made a strongly positive effect on students'reading ability after nearly one semester of reading training.In a word, the current study makes some useful findings which are believed to have implications to reading teaching and learning. And the author also tables some proposals for English newspaper reading teaching, such as how to choose suitable reading materials from the newspaper, how to design proper reading tasks and activities in reading class which can make newspaper teaching much easier and more effective and how to use strategies efficiently to break down the students'language barriers in reading.