Application Of Children’s Literature To English Reading Teaching In Junior Middle School

Literature plays a key role in acquiring foreign languages and developing cultural abilities. The children’s literature in study is defined as classified, simplified English stories and fictions that comply with China’s English curriculum standards of vocabulary and grammar at compulsory education stage. The current English Curriculum Reform of reading course emphasizes inspiring students’ reading interest.Traditionally, the English reading classes tend to excessively emphasize teaching vocabulary and grammar.Children’s literature, with its natural, genuine, concise and plain language and rich cultural knowledge, can not only help to stimulate English learner’s interest and attitude in reading, but can cultivate their multicultural background knowledge in reading and literacy quality.Children’s literature has been widely adopted in English teaching at elementary and secondary schools in foreign countries. At home, some English teachers apply children’s literature to drama performances, especially in Taiwan. However, children’s literature has been less adopted as learning materials in English reading course, especially in western provinces in China.Adopting Input Theory, Output Theory and the Transactional Reading Model as the theoretical framework, the author explores the application of English children’s literature to the English reading teaching in junior middle school in the western part of China. During a three-month reading research, 78Eighth-graders in No.2 Junior Middle School in Urumqi city in Xinjiang were chosen as subjects. All the subjects had to read four selected children’s books. The data from pretest and post-test were collected and then analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Two questionnaires were designed to find all the subjects response to their literature reading background and reading strategies.Based on the quantitative and qualitative data analyses, the author found that the students had similar literature reading background and reading strategies in the pretest(the mean scores of them are 3.21, 3.36,3.26, and 3.23 respectively). Most of them neither had much interest in reading English children’s books nor expected to be provided with literature books by their teachers. In the post-test, students made much more progress in their English reading comprehension tests after being taught children’s literature in reading course. The mean score of the pretest was 54.74. The mean score of the four post-tests is 67.31.The p-value was 0.012(< 0.05). In regard to the attitudes toward children’s literature in reading class, most of the students expressed that reading children’s books developed their English reading proficiency, and provided them with much reading strategies and skills in reading comprehension. Most of the studentsshowed positive responses to the selected literatures. Most of them thought the selected books were interesting and appropriate. Students responded affirmatively to teaching English reading by using children’s literature.Based on findings of the study, it is suggested that the English teachers in junior high schools should bring children’s literature into reading curricula; further studies should have more subjects. Researcher should expand the research time. Different children’s books to assess student’s reading comprehension should be developed. Though there is still some rooms for improvement in this study, the results of this study provide Chinese English teachers with evidence that it is possible and necessary to teach children’s literature in junior middle schools in the western part of China.