A Study On Developing Junior High School Students’ Extra-curriculum English Reading Habit And Strategies

Reading ability as one of the four basic language skills plays a very important role instudents’English learning. Reading ability can help students expand their knowledge,improve their reading ability, and it is helpful to the study of listening, writing and spokenlanguage. Reading is not only a knowledge platform for the students to acquire language, butalso a way to cultivate students’ability of autonomy learning. It also enlarges students’knowledge to some extent. But when the students enter the high school, even though most ofthem do lots of reading comprehension exercises, the reading ability is not enhanced. Themain reason is the traditional teacher-centered teaching mode. Another reason is that studentsin junior high school didn’t access to the proper and adequate cultivation of reading ability, orthe methods and strategies are not suitable for students. The consequence is some of thejunior middle school students lose the reading interest, and have no knowledge aboutsystematic reading skills and strategies. Therefore, in the junior middle school stage, payattention to the training of students’reading ability is very necessary. And theextra-curriculum English reading is a good way to improve the reading ability.Extra-curriculum English reading design with wide range of subjects to arouse students’interest in reading, and also can cultivate students’autonomous reading ability. Thus lay thefoundation for the future learning.This thesis aims to enhance their reading ability and foster the autonomy learning abilityby cultivating students’good extra-curriculum English reading habits and reading strategies.The objects of the experiment are the junior high school students of Five Peak middle schoolin Changqing area. The 104 students are in Grade Two. The thesis means to explore into apreliminary understanding of the current junior middle school students’reading abilitythrough the questionnaire survey. This study was conducted by means of questionnaires andexperiment. According to the results of the survey the author carried out the extracurricularreading training in 14 weeks. The data collected from questionnaires, pre-test and post-testare analyzed by using the statistical treatment software Social Sciences Statistical Package--S.P.S.S.. It aims to test whether the students’English reading ability can be improved by cultivating the good reading habit. The study reveals that the students in the experimentalclass have made greater progress in reading comprehension achievement than those in thecontrol class and the students’ability of autonomy learning ability has been enhanced. Andthrough the interviews and the questionnaire after the experiment, the students inexperimental class were more interested in learning.This thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter One describes the current situation ofour country on the teaching of English reading, research on extra-curriculum English readingat home and abroad, as well as the relationship between extra-curriculum English reading andAutonomous Learning. Chapter Two mainly introduces the theory for extracurricular Englishreading teaching theory basis: humanism and autonomy learning theory, constructivismtheory, metacognitive strategy and introduces the definition of reading, the significance ofreading teaching, the factors affecting the reading, reading pattern and skills. Chapter Threemainly discusses the research methods including the design and its implementation. ChapterFour is the study result and its analysis. Chapter Five includes the findings of the study, theimplication for teaching and its research limitations.