A Study On Improving Students’ Reading Ability By Stimulating Tudents’ Reading Interest In Senior Middle School

Teaching activity is the basic routine of realizing the objectives of aneducation program. Effective stimulation on the interest of studentsguarantees the improvement of English reading comprehension teachingquality. So the reforms of English course in China all regard thecultivation of the interest as the most significant task. English readingcomprehension interest is an important and essential factor. However,exam-oriented education pushes lots of middle-school students far apartfrom English reading and students become less and less interested in it.The objective of this thesis is to put forward the correspondingcountermeasures after knowing about the factors influencing students’interest in English reading all around in the respects of learning habits,teaching materials, etc. through questionnaires and interviews, andcombining with problems analysis, relevant literature and my personalexperience.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one presents a briefintroduction to the background and aims of the study. English reading isan important means of acquiring the second language. Especially with the development of society, English reading is increasingly playing more andmore important parts in one’s life, work and study. Furthermore, readingEnglish a lot can improve one’s abilities of speaking, writing andlistening. Chapter two is a literature review of current research on therelationship between interest and study at home and abroad and it alsodiscusses the theoretical basis of the study and puts forward the questions.The effect interest has on study is a new and old topic. In the research oninterest in contemporary western countries, there are three differentdefinitions of interest, that is, personal interest, situational interest, andthe interest as a state of mind. Herbart puts forward his theories aboutinterest in many respects. In his opinion, a person has interest in manyrespects, and the direct teaching aim is to develop students’ interest.Bruner advocates developing students’ intuitional thinking ability tocultivate students’ interest in reading materials. Chapter three introducesthe processes of the experiment. It states the objective the subjective andthe instruments, in addition, it tells how to pick out proper readingmaterials. The objective of this study is to find out in China how seniormiddle school students’ reading interest impacts their reading ability, andsearch for effective methods and proper reading materials to arouselearners’ reading interest in the process of teaching English reading. Thereare two classes participating in the experiment. Chapter four presentsresults and analysis. It is a detailed account and analysis of the findings generated from the questionnaires, pre-test and post-test. The resultsshow that the teaching experiment in the experimental class proves to beeffective, which can facilitate EFL reading to some extent. Chapter fivedraws the conclusion of the value of the present study and points out theinspiration for English reading teaching and also limitations of the thesisfor a better understanding of English teaching and study.