English Newspaper Reading Assisting English Teaching In High School

The New Curriculum Standard has made it clear that abundant teaching resources such as TV,magazine,newspapers,network information etc. should be actively used to provide practical ,latest and real materials for students, thus developing their competence of learning and using English. However, generally speaking, senior high students' English reading ability does not meet the high requirements of the New Curriculum Standard. In order to find out the specific problems in senior high students' reading, the author makes a survey through questionnaire and tests. The results of the survey indicate that students generally have problems in vocabulary, grammar, comprehension and the range of their reading. They lack effective reading skills and interest in English reading. Therefore, the author concludes that it is urgent that we should help students improve their extra-curricular English reading as well as the Curricular reading.To solve these problems, the author intends to give students guided extra-curricular reading by using 21 Century Teens Senior Edition to assist them in their English learning. The thesis tries to discuss the main views of Constructivist learning theory and explore how to apply it to the teaching of English in senior high school.To start with, the thesis analyzes the present condition of the teaching Of English in senior high schools and the necessity of innovation. After reviewing its origins and developments, the author gives an introduction of Constructivist learning theory. Then, the author argues it is necessary to make use of English newspapers to help improve English teaching employing constructivism. In addition, the author focuses on how to apply reading English newspapers to everyday English teaching. At last, the author carried out an experiment in two senior classes of her own. During the experiment, she guided the students of the experiment class to make use of 21 Century Teens Senior Edition employing a Constructivist teaching approach, 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 improves in interest in English reading, reading ability and testing skills significantly better than the control class.Based on such results, the author draws the conclusion that making use of English newspapers can enlarge students'reading, help them develop interest in English and improve their reading competence.