A Survey On English Extracurricular Reading Of Senior High School Students In The New Curriculum Background

Reading is one of the most important means for people to obtain information from the external world. It is also pointed out clearly in the New National English Curriculum Standard (NNECS) that the amount of extracurricular reading for high school students should respectively reach 180,000 words at level-6,230,000 at level-7 and 300,000 at level-8. However, it’s far from enough to achieve this goal just by reading textbook. Therefore, it’s imperative to carry out extracurricular reading, which works actually as some extension and supplementation to English teaching in class. Besides, extracurricular reading can consolidate the existing knowledge of language and develop independent reading as well as thinking ability. Therefore, the present situation of English extracurricular reading of senior high school students is well worth further exploring.This paper intends to seek answers to the questions as follows:firstly, taking Liuzhou senior high school students as subjects to find out what’s the present situation of high school students’ extracurricular reading under the New National English Curriculum Standard (NNECS), including the feature and reason of motivations, plans, strategies and obstacles, etc; secondly, what’s the correlation between the quality and quantity of extracurricular reading and students’ examination results; thirdly, what are the ways to promote English extracurricular reading among high school students. Quantitative and qualitative research is adopted to facilitate the study. For the quantitative part of the thesis, questionnaire was used to investigate the general situation of English extracurricular reading of Liuzhou senior high school students. With regard to the qualitative part, semi-structured interview was organized for further understanding on the reasons for current situations.The major findings are listed below:(1) In general, present situation of English extracurricular reading of senior high school students has some difference with the requirement posted on NNECS. Students are with strong utilitarianism motivation and lack of reading plans and goals even though they hold a definite attitude towards extracurricular reading. And students need help and guidance in reading material selection and reading strategy.(2) The English examination results are correlated with the quality and quantity of students’extracurricular reading which indicates that it is necessary to promote the English reading after class.(3) Strategies to improve English extracurricular reading mainly fall into six themes: building correct motivation, setting up attainable goals and plans, recommending appropriate reading materials, stressing reading strategy training, enhancing the combination of extracurricular reading with textbook, giving more concerns and support.This study aims to provide some data and analysis for the understanding of current situation of Liuzhou senior high school students’extracurricular reading under the New National English Curriculum Standard (NNECS), also to find out ways for students to make good use of English extracurricular reading and for teachers to develop teaching.