A Study On The Influence Of Rural Primary School Teachers' Guiding Behavior On Students' Extracurricular Reading Time

Nowadays in the era of knowledge economy,reading is an important way for people to acquire knowledge and improve ourselves.People who like or are good at reading are more likely to achieve success.The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study(PIRLS)has shown that the primary school stage is a critical transition period to cultivate students' reading habits,especially in the fourth grade.If reading skills and abilities are not developed by the age of ten,reading gaps may underlie a deceleration among children from grade four,and then affecting the development of reading ability of a lifetime.Furthermore,research has found that reading has a positive effect on students' academic performance and mental health.Spending amount of time to read is the prerequisite and insurance to cultivate students' reading attainment.Researches have found that children who invest adequate time to read can significantly improve their vocabulary and verbal expression.Reading time can predict reading fluency very well,and it has a positive effect on reading ability.Students who spend 30-60 minutes to read every day will have better reading performance.However,in poor rural areas of China,students lack reading time seriously.The study has found that most students have not established reading habit,and only a very small number of students read every day.There are two reasons why students don't have adequate reading time.Firstly,teachers and parents attach importance to scores and textbooks under the exam-oriented system,so extracurricular reading is ignored.Secondly,reading resources are sparse in poor rural China.Students' reading time is inseparable from the teacher's instruction.Researches have found that students will devote more time to reading if teachers instruct them to read.However,few studies have focused on the impact of teacher's instruction on students' extracurricular reading time,especially for poor rural areas.Therefore,this study focuses on the impact of teacher instruction on students'extracurricular reading time.To achieve the objective,we draw on a large-scale survey in southern Jiangxi province,southeast China.We selected 120 primary schools from three counties of Jiangxi Province in rural area.The survey was conducted by questionnaires and interviews.We collected data from teachers and students in the fourth and fifth grades,trying to explore the causal relationship between teacher instruction behavior and students' extracurricular reading time using Propensity Score Matching method(PSM).The results,firstly,show that student' reading time of primary school is seriously inadequate in rural China.Only 15%of the rural primary school students in the sample area read for more than an hour each day,and more than 50%of the students read less than half an hour outside the school.Secondly,the extracurricular reading time is related to the gender,grade and family background.Girls,senior students and richer families will be likely to spend more time in extracurricular reading.Thirdly,teachers in rural areas are insufficient to instruct students to read.Teacher's instruction was evaluated from three aspects,which are whether teachers remind students to borrow books or not,ask students to read the extracurricular book,and recommend book to students.We found that 67%of the students said the teacher did not remind them to borrow books,49%of the students did not receive the recommendation from the teacher about books,and more than 70%of the students said that teachers have never asked them which books they have read.Fourthly,the teacher's instruction has a significantly positive effect on the students' reading time.The data show that if teachers can actively instruct students to read extracurricular books,which embodies in teachers often reminding students to borrow books,recommending the appropriate books to students,or often asking students to read extracurricular books,students extracurricular reading time will be significantly increased.In addition,the qualitative interviews and case studies further validate the main findings of quantitative analysis.In view of the problems and results of this research,we present recommendations as follows.First,school should improve the awareness of teachers to instruct extracurricular reading.Teacher should attach importance to instruct students to read,encourage students to borrow books,recommend appropriate books to students,and exchange views about books with students.Second,the government and school should strengthen construction of the library,improve reading conditions,and ensure students have sufficient extracurricular reading time.Third,teacher should teach students in accordance with their altitude for different groups of students.