A Study Of Applying Guided Extra-curricular Reading In Enhancing Senior High School Students’ English Reading Ability

Th"e saying He who wins reading wi"ns the world indicates theimportance of reading for English learners in senior high school. If we want toi’mprove students reading ability, it is not enough just by reading in class.Therefore, extra-curricular reading based on the theories of LearnerAutonomy, Meta-cognitive Learning Strategy, Scaffolding Instruction andScheme Theory is very important. Nowadays, many scholars at home andabroad conducted a lot of researches on this subject.The New Curriculum Standards for senior high school points out Toi’mprove students reading ability, only teaching the reading passages in thetextbook is far rfom enough. There is need to guide students to read a certainamount of reading materials after class based on the speciifc situation of the"students. The New Curriculum Standards has made clear requirements aboutmiddle school students’ English reading ability. Senior high school studentsare expected to grasp a vocabulary between180,000to300,000words, and tobe able to read English newspapers, magazines and literary works in theoriginal. However, generally speaking，senior high students’ English readingability does not meet the high requirements of the New Curriculum Standard.There exist some common problems of inadequate reading amount and lowlevel of reading ability. The importance of extra-curricular reading has longbeen acknowledged by English teachers. Nevertheless, two problems exist in practice. First, students generally lack motivation to do extra-curricularreading, for it does not seem to have immediate effect on the improvement oftheir testing skills. Second, students feel at a loss in applying reading skillsand choosing extra-curricular reading materials, without the proper guidanceof their teachers, which decreased the st’udents reading interest.To seek solutions of the problems, a research is made in guiding student’sextra-curricular English reading based on the relevant theories of languagelearning and teaching. The purpose of this research is to help students enlargethe input of the target language, master some reading methods, improve theirreading ability，and cultivate the habit of autonomous learning. The mainquestions of this research are:1) Will the learners who receive the guidedextra-curricular reading improve their reading proficiency greatly?2) Will thelearners who receive the guided extra-curricular reading increase their interestand confidence in reading?3) Will the learners who receive the guidedextra-curricular reading can use some reading strategies in doing theirextra-curricular reading?An experiment is conducted for the research. This experiment is carriedout in two senior two parallel classes in Century Middle School, Zhun G’eerBanner. The students in the two classes are in the same level according totheir pretest results by investigation and analysis, the auth"or found threeobstacl"es "and "three lacks concerning students reading. They are obstacle ofnew words, obstacle of grammar, obstacle of comprehension, and lack in the reading scope, lack in the correct reading methods, and lack in the interest.According to the problems in the investigation, the students of the experimentclass are guided in such aspects as their reading skills and choice of readingmaterials, while the control class did the normal extra-curricular readingwithout the teacher’s planned guidance. The results of the experimentdemonstrate that the experiment class who have been guided in theirextra-curricular reading improve in their reading ability, and their interest inEnglish reading is significantly raised compared to the control class. Based onthe results, the author concludes that senior high students must doextra-curricular reading to improve their reading ability, and that guidedextra-curricular reading can enlarge their reading, and help them developinterest in English reading and get higher scores in English reading tests.