A Study On EFL Junior Students' Interest And Performance In Reading

Recently, more and more researchers focus on such non-linguistic factors as interest, motivation and learning strategies. For most students, especially student from junior middle schools, reading is one of the difficulties in their English learning. Exam-oriented education has negative effects and students become less and less interested in English learning. Students' interest has positive influence on the reading effectiveness. So the teaching of English reading in middle school should stimulate students' interest.On the basis of the theories on interest and learning, the present study conduct a research on the several aspects about reading interest, such as reading materials, teaching methods, etc. The present study chooses 80 students from two classes (control class and experimental class) from an ordinary middle school as subjects. Firstly, through questionnaires, it collects data about the students' situation and interest in English reading. The result shows that most students in junior middle school are not interested in English reading, because of the traditional teaching method for reading, and the selection of reading materials. Then the present study carries on a teaching experiment to arouse students' interest in English reading. Two reading comprehension tests are also conducted to collect data. SPSS is used to make comparisons between the results of questionnaires and reading tests before and after the teaching experiment. The results reveals that proper reading materials and teaching methods in reading teaching class can stimulate students' interest in English reading, and that students' reading performance can be improved by arousing their interest.