A Study On Newspaper-aided English Reading Teaching In Senior Middle Schools

Reading plays a dominant role in English teaching. Both English teachers and students have devoted a lot of time and energy to improving it, however, because of the textbooks with limited vocabulary and old reading contents, as well as traditional teaching methods in which English teachers over-emphasize new words and language points, students'reading ability is unsatisfactory.The New Senior English Curriculum Standards indicates the requirements in students'reading ability and the amount of reading are much higher than before and that English teachers should make full use of the rich teaching resources such as audio-media, newspapers, magazines and the Internet to expand the methods of learning and using English. English newspapers, with up-to-date content, authentic language, and various materials close to students'life, are considered to be a good resource in improving students'reading ability.Directed by theories of Krashen's Input Hypothesis and Affective Filter Hypothesis and Schema Theory, the author carried out a one-year study on newspaper-aided reading teaching.82 Senior 1 students who come from Zhuzhou No.1 Middle School were involved in the experiment as subjects. 40 students in Experimental Class were given one-period classroom newspaper reading teaching every week, as well as autonomous newspaper reading after class. The 21 Century Teens (Seniorl Edition) was chosen as their reading materials.42 students in Control Class were also given one-period in-class reading teaching as well as after-class reading exercises. They were instructed in traditional teaching methods, and their reading materials were mainly from the Workbook. Anyway, students in both EC and CC were given the same teaching periods, teaching schedule and the same reading assignment.During the experiment, two tests (pre-test and post-test) were organized in both EC and CC, whose data was collected and analyzed by SPSS 17.0. Two questionnaires were also given to all participants before and after the experiment. In addition, the author had a face-to-face interview with several students from EC to know about their attitudes towards newspaper-aided reading teaching.The experimental results show that the newspaper-aided reading teaching has enlarged students'vocabulary, stimulated students'interest in reading, trained students'reading skills and strategies, and improved the students'reading ability.It is hoped that the study will be of great help to the teachers who have introduced English newspapers into reading teaching, as well as encourage more teachers to apply English newspapers to their own reading teaching practice.