A Study On The Application Of Narrow Reading To English Reading Teaching In Junior High School

Narrow reading is a kind of beneficial learning and reading strategy,which is defined as reading a series of passages that are about the same topic,the same genre or reading several books written by the same author.Many scholars and researchers at home and abroad have conducted a wealth of studies about narrow reading.The present study aims to explore the effect of narrow reading on junior high school students'English reading comprehension ability,English reading interest and reading confidence after applying to English reading teaching.Sixty subjects of the present study are chosen from Class One and Class Two in Grade Eight enrolled at Ganli School in Shenzhen,and they all take part in the study voluntarily.In this experiment,Class One is the experimental class and Class Two is the control class.Students from the experimental class all read topic-related materials selected by the writer while students from the control class all read unrelated materials selected by the writer according to their learning level and cognitive ability.The current study intends to answer the following two research questions:(1)What influence does narrow reading have on junior high school students'English reading comprehension ability?(2)How does narrow reading influence junior high school students' English reading interest and reading confidence?In order to answer the foregoing two questions,the writer adopts questionnaires,tests and interview as experimental instruments to collect the experimental data.Questionnaires employed in the study are to gather information about students' English reading interest and confidence before and after the experiment.The identical questionnaire is utilized before and after the experiment,however,the sequence of questions is changed completely.Tests are used to testify the influence of narrow reading on students' English reading comprehension ability.In the pre-test,the writer adopts reading and cloze part of the first-term final exam paper of Grade Eight.In order to guarantee that two classes' English proficiency is at the same level before implementing the present experiment,the writer conducts an independent sample t-test to compare subjects' final exam scores of the first term.At the end of the experiment,the writer adopts cloze and reading part of the second-term final English exam paper.And the writer conducts an independent sample t-test to compare subjects' final exam scores of the second term to corroborate that there is a significant difference between two classes' reading comprehension ability.Finally,the writer uses the interview to get timely feedback from students about the application of narrow reading to English reading teaching.The experimental data are analyzed by SPSS 19.0 software,which make a sound preparation for analyzing and discussing the results.After a four-month experiment,the writer principally concludes the following major findings.The first finding of the present research reflects that students' English reading comprehension ability in the experimental class has been improved greatly compared with those in the control class.Another finding worth mentioning is that multiple exposures to the recurrent vocabulary promote vocabulary learning.The last important finding of the current study is that students show a great increase in both interest and confidence in English reading after the application of narrow reading.The results of experiment indicate that narrow reading promotes junior high school students' English reading comprehension ability and stimulates their interest and confidence in English reading.Hence,the application of narrow reading to English reading teaching is beneficial to students' reading learning to some degree.