English Newspaper Reading As An Auxiliary For The Development Of Junior High School Students’ Reading Competence

In China,for most English learners,the greatest obstacle of English learning is the lack of authentic English environment.Considering that,reading is regarded as the most effective and common way to learn English and at the same time to gain enough information.That is to say,the importance of reading is really significant for both obtaining information and developing linguistic skills of English.Despite the fact that teachers put much emphasis on reading teaching in junior schools,the actual effect of reading teaching is not that satisfying.Reasons for this phenomenon are various,for example,teachers’ conservative teaching concepts and patterns and the comparatively limited and boring reading materials.Although students have had adequate training,their interests in reading are spoiled rather than being promoted.Furthermore,students become good at doing exercises mechanically while their reading abilities haven’t been improved.In view of this situation,it’s urgent to seek better methods and materials of reading teaching which suit junior school students in order to improve the teaching of English readingOne of the trends led by the recent curriculum reform is to encourage teachers to take full advantage of teaching resources which are practical and authentic for students.That’s why English newspapers are chosen as the supplementary reading materials in this research.Though quite a few teachers have started to realize the convenience and superiority of English newspapers in English teaching and some researches concerning the relationship between English newspaper reading and reading teaching spring up,the use of English newspapers and the related teaching designs differ from one another during the daily teaching.Therefore,the writer aims to find out some effective teaching methods of teaching English newspaper reading and also to verify the feasibility and validity of newspaper reading in supporting the teaching of English reading through a teaching experiment.During the research,Shanghai Students’ Post was chosen as the reading material.Based on the Second Language Acquisition Theories and Schematic Theories,the experiment lasted for almost one year.There are three stages in the experiment.At the first stage,students involved did a survey by a questionaire,an interview and a reading test to evaluate their reading abilities and attitudes of that time.At the second stage,after all the statistics were collected and analyzed,the writer tried a series of new teaching methods and focused on the training of reading strategies and skills for the students.At the third stage,all the students had another survey,interview and reading test to evaluate the improvement of their reading abilities and attitudes.Finally,it is concluded that the introduction of English newspaper reading with reasonable guidance does great help in promoting students’ interests in reading,cultivating their reading ability,improving reading efficiency,widening the scope of knowledge,and developing self-study competence.