The Important Role Of Guided Extra-curricular Reading In Enhancing Students' English Reading In College Entrance Examination

The New Curriculum Standard has made clear requirements about middle school students' English reading ability. Senior high students are expected to grasp a vocabulary between 180,000 to 300,000 words, and to be able to read English newspapers, magazines and literary works in the original. However, generally speaking, Senior high students' English reading ability does not meet the high requirements of the New Curriculum Standard. In order to locate the specific problems in senior high students' reading, the present author makes a survey through questionnaire and tests. The results of the survey show that students generally have problems in vocabulary, grammar, comprehension and the range of their reading. They generally lack effective reading skills and interest in English reading. Therefore, the present author concludes that it is urgent that we should help students improve their English reading ability.To combat the aforementioned problems, the present author proposes that students should be guided in their extra-curricular English reading. The importance of extra-curricular reading has long been acknowledged by English teachers. The Syllabus for Senior English Teaching (issued by the Ministry of Education) designates that, to improve their English reading ability, students should do extensive guided extra-curricular English reading. Nevertheless, two problems exist in practice. First, students generally lack motivation to do extra-curricular reading, for it does not often have immediate effect on the improvement of their testing skills. Second, students feel at a loss in the reading skills and choice of extra-curricular reading materials, without the proper guidance by their teachers. To solve these problems, the present author intends to give students guided extra-curricular reading so that students have clear purposes in their reading and their testing skills can be improved significantly.In this thesis, the present author discusses the common problems in senior high students' English reading and proposes ways in which teachers can guide students in their extra-curricular teaching. To verify the feasibility of her hypothesis, the present author carried out an experiment in two senior three classes in her middle school, Yicheng No.1 Middle School. During the experiment, she guided the students of the experiment class in such aspects as their reading skills and choice of reading materials, while the control class also did extra-curricular reading, but without the teacher's guidance. The results of the experiment demonstrate that the experiment class who have been guided in their extra-curricular reading improve in their reading ability, testing skills for College Entrance Examination and interest in English reading significantly better than the control class.Based on such results, the present author concludes that senior high students must do extensive extra-curricular reading to improve their reading ability, and that guided extra-curricular reading can enlarge their reading, and help them develop interest in English reading and get higher scores in English reading of the College Entrance Examination.