An Action Research On The Effects Of Narrow Reading Training On Senior High School Students' English Vocabulary Acquisition

Vocabulary is deemed one of the most essential components of learning a language.Important as it is,students find it extremely challenging to memorize the newly-learnt words and use them flexibly in diverse contexts.They,hence,lose interest gradually in vocabulary learning.Therefore,it is necessary for senior high school teachers to improve students' receptive and productive knowledge of the newly learnt words with proper and effective vocabulary instruction,and eventually promote their language proficiency.Narrow Reading,first proposed by Krashen(1981),is a learning strategy that aims to improve learners' second language acquisition by reading a series of texts around one particular topic,works of the same author or of the same genre.It is recognized as an effective approach to lexical growth.In order to explore an effective way to enhance students' effectiveness in vocabulary acquisition,and verify the effect of narrow reading on word receptive and productive knowledge,the author conducted an action research based on Krashen's Affective Filter Hypothesis,Schema Theory,and Swain's Output Hypothesis.The current research is to answer two questions:(1)Does narrow reading training contribute to students' word receptive and productive knowledge?(2)Does narrow reading training improve the students' interest in learning the words?Sixty four Grade two students from Xinhui No.1 Middle School participated in the ten-week action research.First,a preliminary investigation was conducted before the action for problem identification,including a questionnaire,an interview and pre-test.Based on the problems,the author put forward the research questions.Then the author made an overall plan of the narrow reading training,which included two rounds.The first round lasted for five weeks.After that,a periodical vocabulary test and an interview were conducted,the results of which were analyzed for necessary adjustments.The second round also lasted for five weeks,after which the author conducted a periodical vocabulary test,an interview as well as a questionnaire to reflect on the current research.Finally,the vocabulary tests,the questionnaires and the interview were analyzed by means of SPSS 18.0.The results of the tests were analyzed using Paired-Samples t test,and the results of questionnaires and the interview were analyzed using tables and graphs.The results show that improvement arises in students' word receptive and productive knowledge after carrying out two-round narrow reading training.Compared to pre-test(Testl),the mean of the receptive test and productive test(Test2)has respectively increased by 6.10%,5.51%after the first-round training.When compared to Test2,the mean of the receptive test and productive test(Test3)has respectively increased by5.51%,6.36%after the second-round training.Based on the results of the tests,questionnaires and interviews,two conclusions can be made as follows.(1)High school students' word knowledge can be enhanced by means of narrow reading training.(2)High school students' interest in vocabulary learning can be aroused through narrow reading trainingBased on the conclusion,the thesis proposes some implications for high school teachers,high school students and the textbook compliers.Firstly,teachers should encourage students to read books of their beloved writers or articles with a familiar back ground and design post-reading tasks to promote the effectiveness of vocabulary learning.Secondly,students are supposed to choose reading materials to their own interests and do narrow reading training constantly.Finally,the compilers should ensure the comprehensibility of the reading materials as well as the word frequency in a certain topic.