An Empirical Study On The Effects Of Sustained Silent Reading On English Reading Ability Of Junior High School Students

This paper mainly studies the effect of sustained silent reading on English reading ability of junior high school students.In today's education system and the examination system,reading aiming at answering the questions has become the mainstream of junior high school reading teaching,which is inevitable.However,providing students only with this way of reading will hinder the development of students' reading ability.In order to improve students' interest in reading and cultivate good reading habits,the author carries out Sustained Silent Reading in daily teaching which is 15 minutes a day for teachers and students quietly reading together.Students choose their own reading materials that interest them,and read independently.The teacher guides the students to open the door to reading and let them enjoy themselves.Once the door is pushed away,even without a teacher,students can enjoy themselves in the world of reading.This can balance the disadvantages of the reading training of exam-oriented education and be used as a supplement to the routine reading training which is inclined to the test-oriented training.Besides traditional reading training,this reading activity provide students with another 15 minutes of Sustained Silent Reading which is a period of reading time with no pressure of doing any exercises.It is hoped that this reading training will help them develop good reading habits,so that reading can become enjoyable and the norm of life.Based on Krashen's monitoring theory and humanistic teaching theory,an experimental research and qualitative research is conducted,and the following assumption is raised: 15 minutes Sustained Silent Reading can improve junior high school students' reading ability.This study attempts to answer the following three questions:1)How does Sustained Silent Reading effect English reading interest of junior high school students?2)How does Sustained Silent Reading effect English reading speed of junior high school students?3)How does Sustained Silent Reading effect English reading comprehension of junior high school students ?The objects in this experiment are 30 students from a parallel class of the grade eight in a junior high school in Yueyang city.At the same time,30 students in another parallel class I teach are in the control group.Through two questionnaires,two test reading comprehension tests and two reading speed tests,the author studies for three months about the effect of Sustained Silent Reading on reading interest and reading ability.Before the experiment,the author tries to know the students' reading interests and reading ability through the questionnaires,interviews and pre-tests.During the experiment,both of the groups take the traditional teaching methods while during the 15-minute reading period,the control group goes on with Chinese material reading and the experimental group begins 15-minute Sustained Silent Reading.The two groups are tested after the experiment and the data are compared and analyzed.The results of this study shows that 15 minutes of Sustained Silent Reading can promote students' reading interest and also improves the reading speed and accuracy.Thus,traditional reading training can also cooperate with Sustained Silent Reading training to balance the drawbacks of traditional reading training,while allowing students to truly feel the fun of reading and develop good English reading habits and improve their English reading ability.