On Self-Access Reading In English Teaching

With the development of the world's politics, economy, and culture, the international communication is becoming more and more common now. As we know, most international organizations use English as their working language, and all the international trades are done in English, so English is becoming more and more important. However, the efficiency of learning and teaching English in middle school is not satisfying, as after six years of learning English in school, many students still can't use English to deal with information. The author of this paper tries to find out a way to improve students' English by improving their reading in senior middle school, because reading is an essential way of learning, especially learning a language.In the paper the author first discusses the importance of reading in general and in learning English, and men put forward the problems students face in reading and the problems that exist in teaching English reading in senior middle school. In order to solve the problems the author thinks we may develop students' ability of self-access reading.Self-access reading is derived from self-access language learning, which means students read English according to the plans which they work out themselves. In the process of reading, they can use proper reading strategies, monitor their own reading and assess their reading. At the end, they can also check how they have carried their plans and evaluate their own reading.To establish students' habit of self-reading, the first thing we should do is to arouse students' interest in reading English. And it is also important to stimulate students' motivation of reading. At the same time, the author thinks that we need to pay much attention to developing students' metacognition and reading strategies to help them carry on self-access reading smoothly. In the paper, the author also introduces two efficient ways for teachers to help students to form the habit ofself-access reading, which are task-based reading and cooperative reading. At last, the paper discusses the assessment and evaluation of self-access reading. There are three types of assessment and evaluation that occur regularly throughout the school year, diagnostic, formative, and summative. These types are discussed separately in the paper.Self-access readmg is an efficient way to improve students' ability of reading English. It is not difficult for students to possess the ability of doing self-access reading or get into the habit of doing self-access readmg if teachers can pay attention to changing our own role in teaching, strengthening students' motivation of reading, protecting students' interest in reading, and developing students' metacognition and reading strategies. We hope that all English teachers in senior middle schools will do their best to help students to do so.