A Research Into The Self-Access Learning Mode In High School English Reading

Reading is one of the most important ability in the language ability development for the senior middle school students. It is also a crucial means for their further study in the future. Furthermore, the fast development of the information society and education has both set higher goals for the contemporary high school students about their reading ability. However, judging from the present situations in the high schools in China, it is quite far from satisfaction. The students usually content themselves only with listening to the teacher and the teachers devote too much of their time to paraphrasing the limited number of passages in the text book sentence by sentence and researching into the examination strategies. Therefore, the reading lessons have become, to some extent, grammar lessons, vocabulary lessons or paper analysis lessons. Students can only learn some limited knowledge about the language itself and some tactics in the exams, which do not always prove to be useful for everybody. They seldom benefit from this kind of traditional monotonous teaching mode about their overall development and interest formation in reading.Fortunately, the development of the society requires corresponding reforms with education. The reforms in education also call for the transform of learners'roles and innovation of teaching modes. Teachers not only need to teach the students learn what to learn, but also learn how to learn. The students should not only make full use of the limited resources within the classroom, but also further their study outside the classroom under scientific guidance in an active and self-motivated way. Therefore, both the teachers and the students should work together to reach a mutual understanding that we should combine the classroom instruction and the self-access study out of the class. We should both take advantage of the teachers'guidance, the learners'innovation and self-motivation so that we can enhance the students overall reading ability and appreciation standards.This paper is based on the theory of constructivism, and has designed a self-access mode of reading learning for the nowadays high school students in China. An experiment is done to prove the effects of this kind of self-access reading learning (SARL). By doing those kinds of jobs, we attempt to answer the following questions:1. Why is it necessary and possible to carry out self-access reading learning?2. How can we carry out a self-access reading learning?3. To what extent is the self-access reading learning more effective than the traditional learning modes?The development of the society and education has made the self-access study a general trend for the contemporary high school students. At the same time, their cognitive characteristics and their beginning level as high school students have provided possibilities for SARL. The"theory of constructivism"also gives this research a sound theoretical support.The SARL research includes the following aspects: the present reading teaching situations in high schools and the needs from the educational reform for a self-access teaching and learning mode in this area, the materials for SARL, the SARL counseling, the SARL activities, the assessment about it and so on.This research has been carried out for a period of one year among the students in a key high school in Dalian. 100 students are divided into an experimental class and a comparative class. The students in the experimental class follow the SARL mode while the students in the comparative class follow the traditional classroom learning mode as usual. The whole research is strictly controlled and the results of every step are carefully analyzed from the beginning to the end. Finally, we arrive at a conclusion: To carry out SARL for the contemporary high school students can greatly improve the efficiency as well as their interest and self-motivation in learning. Moreover, it can also lay a good foundation for the students'life long study in the long run.