An Experimental Study Of The Application Of Narrow Reading On English Reading Teaching In Senior High School

The purpose of English reading teaching is to cultivate students' integrated linguistic competence,which is always the key and difficult point in English teaching in senior high school.English reading comprehension ability is regarded as one of the four basic skills of language learning,playing an important part in EFL/ESL learning.In the meantime,the difficulty and depth of the NMET on reading comprehension are increasing year by year.However,most students in senior high school are poor at English reading performance,lacking interest in English reading.Time of English reading is seriously insufficient and the reading quantity is small.What's worse,the reading material selection is single and students are lacking in reading strategies and skills.However,in the reading class,the teachers usually focus on language details and the overall emphasis on the article is not enough.Therefore,how to enhance students' English reading ability quickly and effectively in a limited time has become one of the research focuses.The proposal of narrow reading brings new enlightenment to English reading teaching.Narrow Reading,firstly proposed by Krashen early in 1981,is a reading strategy which advocates reading on the same topics,books by the same author,or in the same genre.It is supposed that students' reading comprehension and interest would be improved with their accumulation of background knowledge being enlarged.Scholars both at home and abroad have carried out a series of studies.However,much attention is mainly paid to the studies of the theory and model of narrow reading,but few empirical studies focus on senior high school students.Consequently,in order to explore the effects of narrow reading strategies on English reading proficiency of senior high school students,an experimental study was conducted,which takes high school students as the research subjects.This study attempts to answer the following two questions:(1)Can narrow reading improve senior high school students' English reading achievements?(2)Does narrow reading stimulate senior high school students' English reading interest ?The subjects of this experimental study come from two classes of Senior One in an ordinary senior high school in Jiangmen City,Guangdong Province,with 100 students all together.The two classes were randomly divided into an experimental class and a control class with similar English proficiency.The experimental class received reading training under the guidance of narrow reading strategies while in the control class,traditional teaching method was adopted.The experimental instruments are pre-test,post-test,two questionnaires and an interview.Statistical analysis was done by SPSS 17.0.The results reveal:(1)Although students in both experimental and control class have made progress in their English reading achievements,more significant improvement can be found in the experimental class.It is concluded that narrow reading can improve the students' English reading achievements.(2)According to the data analyses from the questionnaires and the interview,after months of reading training,students have become more interested in English reading.Based on the results of the research,the author put forward some potential implications for the teaching of English reading in senior high school with the hope of improving the quality of English reading teaching and students' English reading comprehension.