The Impact Of English Newspaper Reading On The English Reading Ability Of Rural High School Students

Reading competence is an important part of English learning competence.Cultivating students' reading competence is a chief aim of education in our primary and middle schools . In order to improve reading competence, the learner need to read a lot of reading materials which are connected with current affairs. In rural senior high schools, English reading teaching is always in a backward and passive situation. Most teachers in rural senior high school still use the reading materials of our textbooks to teach English reading. With the development of the world, the English language is always developing. As a result, the out-of date reading materials of textbooks can't keep pace with our times. What's worse, the dull reading teaching style can't arouse the students' reading interests. Therefore, the key to reforming reading teaching is to change the traditional reading teaching style, the students' attitudes towards English and arouse their interests of English reading. There is no doubt that introducing English newspaper reading to reading teaching in rural area is a new try.The questions of the study are as follows: 1) What effects can English newspaper reading have on students' vocabularies? 2) In terms of reading habits, what effects can English newspaper reading have? 3) What is the function of English newspaper reading in improving students' reading competence and comprehensive English levels?The study objects were two parallel classes totaled 110 students in a certain senior high school in rural area. The study was based on theories of Krashen's EFL acquisition and Schema Theory. At first, the author gave away the questionnaire to the students, who took the pre-tests later. After learning the present situation, the author designed the teaching tasks and carried out the English newspaper reading experiment in the experimental class. The experiment was designed to explore the effects of English Newspaper reading on rural senior high school students Reading competence.In the process of experimental teaching, 55 students of the experimental class participated in English newspapers reading and were taught some reading strategies while 55 students of the compared class adopted the traditional reading materials and methods of reading. At the end of the experiment, the two classes students participated the questionnaire, interview and the post-tests. The author analyzed the data collected from the experiment.The study findings are that: 1) Since the reading materials of English newspapers have a close connection with our daily life, adopting English newspapers reading is easier to arouse students' reading interests, which can enlarge students' vocabularies and enrich students' background information; 2) Reading English newspapers can help them develop some good habits of reading, master and adopt reading strategies,which can contribute to improving their reading speed. 3) Students can improve their reading level and comprehensive English level, which is beneficial to their lifetime study.In addition to providing some significance for teaching English reading, the study can also give some instructions to many English teachers. The author hope that the study can be beneficial to the teachers who teach English reading and further more English teachers to adopt English newspapers reading into their reading teaching practice.