The Cultivation Of Extra-Curriculum Autonomous English Reading Ability Of Senior Middle School Students Based On Standards Of English Curriculum

In foreign language learning, reading is not only an important aspect of language abilities, but also a key measure to improve language competence. No wonder that in senior school education reading is regarded as the focus and core of English teaching. However, it cannot be hoped that a learner can improve his reading level only by depending on the limited input of reading materials in class. He should read widely after class. There are also specific requirements of extra-curricular readings in new national Standard of English Curriculum. Hence, how to motivate students to read actively and efficiently has become a main concern.At the beginning of writing this paper, an interview and a questionnaire were conducted in Jingzhou High School so as to know the existing situation of extra-curricular reading. The results show that there are many problems in extra-curricular reading activities. On the part of the teachers, they do not pay enough attention to it, or direct it properly or assess it effectively. On the part of the students, they lack reading goals and plans, and neither do they have abilities of self-monitoring and self-administration. Because of the above problems, extra-curricular readings are not carried out as expected. In order to solve the problems, extra-curricular autonomous reading is proposed, which is based on modern teaching theories.At first, the thesis defines the term of "extra-curriculum autonomous reading" and explains its importance. Then it elaborates on the theories of Krashen's Second Language Acquisition, Constructivism, Humanism and Meta-cognitive and their inspiration of extra-curriculum autonomous reading. Based on that, two forms of extra-curricular reading are proposed, which are interest-oriented extra-curricular autonomous reading and topic-discussing extra-curricular autonomous reading. The former includes six steps, which are forming extra-curricular reading groups based on learners' interests, teachers' recommendations of the reading materials, choosing reading materials and making reading plans, reading autonomously after class, exchanging information within groups, showing reading achievements to classmates; the latter one includes five steps, namely teachers giving topics, sharing the work within groups, reading to search for information autonomously after class, summarizing information within groups and exchanging results in class.This paper also provides an experiment with the interest-oriented extra-curricular autonomous reading and topic-discussing extra-curricular autonomous reading, which takes twenty weeks. After presenting and analyzing the results and data, the author argues that the two forms of autonomous reading of extra-curriculum are effective, which can enlarge the quantity of reading, increase reading speed and improve the students' reading ability. Of course, there are also some areas of the two forms that need to be improved in the future.To enhance learners' autonomous learning ability is the necessity of teaching reform and requirement of physical and mental development of learners. Extra-curriculum autonomous reading can foster the learners' autonomous learning ability as well as improve their present reading ability, so that it can pave the way for lifetime learning. It is hoped that what has been put forward in the dissertation can be of some value to the colleagues.