A Study On The Influences Of Narrow Reading On Students' English Reading Ability In Senior High School

Narrow Reading refers to a kind of approach through which readers are expected to read a large number of reading materials with only one subject,one genre or the works by one author within a period of time,so that the readers are supposed to have a better understanding of the topic or genre deeply.In this way,readers can be expected to improve their reading ability and promote language acquisition.Based on the compiling features of current Senior English Textbooks,topic-function-activity structure,this paper takes topic-based Narrow Reading as the main thread to explore the influences of Narrow Reading on senior students' reading ability trying to answer the following two questions:(1)Can Narrow Reading motivate the students' interest and motivation in English reading?(2)What influences does Narrow Reading have on senior students' English reading ability?This paper adopts such methods as questionnaire,interview and experimental method under the guidance of Input Hypothesis and Schema Theory.The research procedures are like this: first,based on the students' English scores of the final exam in Senior One,two parallel classes,Class 9 and Class 11,are chosen as the research subjects.The subjects are 140 students in Senior Two from Minqin No.1 Middle School,Gansu Province.One is assigned as experimental class(using narrow reading group)and the other is assigned as controlled class(using random reading group).Both of the experimental class and controlled class are given the same number of English classes,set the same amount of reading tasks every week and taught by one teacher.Before the experiment,the preliminary questionnaire is conducted in the experimental class to investigate the students' current situation of English reading.And the pretest on English reading ability reveals that there is no significant difference in students' reading ability between the experimental class and the controlled class.Based on this condition,the students in the experimental class receive the narrow reading training by guided reading materials with similar topics.And the topics of reading materials are related closely to those in New Senior English for China Students Books(PEP)Module 5 and 6.The narrow reading training is conducted focused on one chosen topic every two weeks,and the students in the experimental class are required to finish the reading tasks in the English reading class and extended autonomous reading after class.While the controlled class employs traditional English reading training,that is,the students are asked to read four reading passages without restricted topics or genres and to finish the given reading exercises.After fourteen-week experiment,the post-questionnaire is given out to the experimental class to test the changes of students' reading interest,reading skills and reading habits in experimental class.In order to find out what is behind to some questions,six students of them are interviewed to trace further information.Then the posttest on students' English reading ability is conducted in the experimental class and controlled class,and the research data is collected and analyzed from qualitative and quantitative aspects.The study results have shown that the topic-based Narrow Reading method related to the topics of English textbooks can lower the difficulty of reading materials–because students can be repeatedly exposed to the same or similar vocabulary,syntactic structures and discourse features.As a result,narrow reading training can gradually enhance the senior students' internal interest in English reading and learning.After the study,many students expect that the teachers can help them select the English reading materials related with similar topic or genre appropriate to their English learning ability.This can make them access to a quantity of repetitive comprehensible input.The study results have also shown that attaching importance to offer strategy-based instruction in reading is necessary to students,which can raise their awareness in using reading strategies,such as skimming,scanning or word-guessing skills.The research has found out that narrow reading method is beneficial for the students to develop their autonomous English reading habits and strengthen their long-time reading intention.This can help the students overcome the blindness and randomness in selecting reading materials.To sum up,Narrow Reading not only improves the senior students' English reading ability,but also promotes their comprehensive competence of using English.