An Empirical Research Into The Effects Of Narrow Reading Training On Junior Middle School Students' Reading Ability

Although reading strategy instruction has been attached great importance to,the input organization of reading materials is neglected and always arbitrary.Krashen proposed the concept of narrow reading in the early 1980 s,referring to reading only one genre,one subject matter,or the works of one author within a certain period of time to reinforce continuity,relevance and contextual knowledge of the input materials,thereby providing built-in review of structure and vocabulary.A large amount of related previous research has shown that narrow reading has positive effects on learners' reading ability,vocabulary acquisition,and writing ability.Enlightened by input hypothesis,relevance theory and schema theory,this study applies narrow reading training in junior middle school English classroom to explore the effects of narrow reading on junior middle school students' reading ability.The specific research objectives are listed as follows: 1)To explore whether narrow reading training can improve students' English reading performance;2)To explore whether narrow reading training can increase students' interest in English reading.In this study,65 Grade Eight students from a middle school in Tianhe District of Guangzhou participated in the test,with 33 students in the experimental class and 32 students in the control class.The entire experiment lasted for about 17 weeks.Research tools included a pretest,a posttest,two questionnaires,and an interview.Before the experiment,the pretest was conducted to ensure that the two classes participating in the experiment had the same reading level.In addition,two classes were instructed by the same teacher and used the same text book and reading materials during the whole course of the experiment.What's more,the experimental class adopted narrow reading training method,while the control class adopted the traditional extensive reading training method.Before narrow reading training,a questionnaire(Questionnaire I)was conducted in the experimental class to know about the students' reading interest,reading confidence,their difficulty in reading etc.The order of topics for narrow reading training was arranged in terms of the results of Questionnaire I.After narrow reading training,Questionnaire II was conducted in theexperimental class to find out whether students' interest in reading had increased.After Questionnaire II,students in the experimental class were divided into three groups according to their English levels and two students were randomly selected from three groups respectively to participate in an interview,aiming to further understand whether narrow reading had different effects on the reading ability of students with different English levels.Finally,the posttest was carried out in both classes to compare the reading grades.After the experiment,a series of t-tests were used to compare the results within and between groups.Percentage statistics was employed to analyze the results of questionnaires,and category analysis was applied to analyze the results of the interview.Data analysis of posttest results shows that the average score of the experimental class is significantly higher than that of the control class,which means that narrow reading training can improve the reading performance of junior middle school students.Besides,the results of questionnaires and interview indicate that narrow reading has positive influence on junior middle school students' interest in English reading.Moreover,it is worth mentioning that the results of the interview show that narrow reading has different effects on the reading ability of students with different English levels.As for the specific degree of difference between such effects,further study is needed.The above findings have the following implications.Narrow reading training has positive effects on junior middle school students' reading ability.However,if narrow reading training is conducted in a mixed-English-level class,not only students' interest,but also the difficulty level of the materials should be taken into consideration when selecting reading materials.Articles with different difficulty levels on the same topic can be offered to students with different English levels.