The Study Of Extensive Reading Class In High School

According to new Curriculum Standards,a high school student should have read230,000 words by the time he graduates from high school.This is the requirement of the seventh level.Since Extensive Reading class has long been absent from most high schools in Shanghai,it is necessary to develop this type of class.Furthermore,if most students choose classics as their reading material,they are far beyond students’ reading competence.The study focuses on the application of young adult fiction,which is popular reading material among teenagers in English-speaking countries,to the Extensive Reading class in high schools.The author taught an Extensive Reading class for three months.SPSS is applied to examine whether this reading class can improve students’ reading strategies.It is concluded that Extensive Reading class can significantly improve students’ reading strategies,such as the ability to get the general idea and the meanings of the unknown words from context and improve fast reading skills significantly.The author believed that young adult fictions are very suitable reading materials for high school students.On one hand,the topic is popular,which can easily arouse students’ interest and motivation.On the other hand,young adult fictions’ language is simple,which makes it more accessible to English learners in high schools.Finally,some suggestions on Extensive Reading teaching are provided in this thesis,including how to choose suitable young adult fictions,how to choose excerpts from the novels and how to organize an Extensive Reading class.