The Application Of English Newspaper Reading To Reading Class Of Senior High School

Being an important skill of obtaining information and receiving language input, reading is undoubtedly one of the most vital aspects in English learning and teaching. Therefore cultivating students'reading ability is the first and foremost requirement of English teaching and learning in senior high schools. The Senior High School Curriculum Standard lays great emphasis on learning English as a communicative tool and teachers should make great efforts to develop students' ability to use English, that is, the ability to obtain information and process information. In recent years, the proportion of reading comprehension in the university entrance exam of English has become increasingly significant. However, though both teachers and students have devoted a massive amount of time and energy to reading, students haven't achieved as much reading competence as expected. The reason is multi-folded, such as the ignorance of stimulating students'reading motivation and the unawareness of developing students'reading strategy, etc. Moreover, the current textbooks as well as some teaching materials are not good enough, the contents of the texts are more or less limited, and vocabulary support in the textbook is insufficient. Therefore, such textbooks are unable to provide enough authentic language input for the students or stimulate their passion for English learning.This paper, based on the investigation of teaching reading in Shanghai Senior High Schools, aims to analyze and explore:(1) the reading attitudes and reading activities in high school English teaching and learning. (2) the features and contents of the New Century textbook.(3) the reading comprehensions from 2005-2009 university entrance examination paper of English. Through quantitative and qualitative analyses and further reflections, this paper seeks to discover some potential problems in the training of reading strategies and suggests that English newspaper reading should be integrated with traditional reading. Compared with English textbooks, English newspapers have some positive distinctive characteristics: up-to-date materials, authentic language, various subject matters close to life, etc. It is obvious that English newspapers can enrich teaching resources and stimulate students'enthusiasm for reading.This paper endeavors to probe into the possibility of integrating second language acquisition theory, schema theory, and the Curriculum Standard of Teaching English. It also involves the teaching of reading strategies, the use of teaching materials and the analysis of language testing, as well as the emotions, attitudes and motivations in the reading process. This research is based on a 3-month program of reading strategy training via learner-centered classroom activities in the Affiliated High School of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. This program focuses on the contrastive studies of the following four issues:(1) the self-evaluation of English reading; (2) the emotions, attitudes and extracurricular reading activities in English reading; (3) learning materials and the variation of learning time; (4) the application of reading strategies and techniques; (5) the analysis of testing results.Based on the research, this paper recommends that reading English newspapers develop students' reading strategies and reading awareness, stimulate their reading interests, enlarge their vocabulary and strengthen their cultural awareness, therefore exerting positive impacts on students' reading proficiency and their comprehensive abilities to use English.