The Relationship Between Suggestopedia And The English Reading Speed Of The Chinese Middle School Students

It is well known that reading is one of the most important abilities that we have to improve in ESL classes. Reading speed and reading comprehension are two main aspects of reading ability. Reading is a complicated process which is affected by the three variables: the writer, the text and the reader. After summarizing the history and the theory on how to teach reading in an ESL class, this paper brings out the concepts of actual reading speed and practical reading speed. It also tells the reason why Chinese middle school students read English slowly and gives the ways to improve students' reading speed, one of which is to use proper teaching methods.Suggestopedia is one of the most widely used English teaching methods in the world nowadays. Compared with other teaching methods , Suggestopedia can arouse students' interest in learning, stimulate their motives and bring out students' latent potentialities by using the method properly. The paper fully introduces and analyzes the very important and influential English teaching method——Suggestopedia, its characteristics, concept, principles, procedures and the factors which affect the operation. The paper also provides a teaching case on how to use Suggestopedia in teaching English reading.In order to research the relationship between the teaching method of Suggestopedia and the reading speed of junior middle school students in Shanghai, I did an experiment on teaching English reading in a junior middle school in Shanghai using the teaching method of Suggestopedia. Before the experiment I carried out a survey by questionnaire to pinpoint some problems about the students' English reading, and started the experiment based on the findings of the survey.The experiment was conducted in two classes. The students in both classes were considered of the same language proficiency according to the statistical analysis of the pretest. One of the classes was appointed as the experimental group, where the teaching method of Suggestopedia was employed, and the other as the control group, where traditional teaching was in use. The experiment lasted for one semester, from January 2008 to June 2008. After the teaching experiment data analysis was done to improve the validity of Suggestopedia.The data analysis shows that Suggestopedia is an effective way to improve students' reading speed. It can help students to study more actively. Though the experiment needs further improvement and development, we have the reason to believe that Suggestopedia will be of great practical value to both teachers and students.