An Empirical Study On The Effect Of Narrow Sustained Silent Reading On Junior High School Students' Reading Literacy

In 2015,the Ministry of Education put forward four key competences of foreign language study including linguistic competence,cultural awareness,thinking quality and learning capacity.Foreign language reading literacy,which includes foreign language reading character and reading ability,is an important part of linguistic competence,and a basic skill for junior high school students.However,the author found that there are many problems when students are reading,such as reading English materials as tasks,not being able to concentrate when reading or read for long time,not reading sufficient extracurricular reading materials,and so on.Therefore,in this study,the author tries to improve these problems by applying NSSR in the author's English reading class,aiming to enhance junior high school students' reading character and reading ability.This research is a mixed study.First,an action research is employed to explore the effect of NSSR on junior high school students' reading literacy.Then,an experimental research is conducted to examine which improves junior high school students' English reading ability more effectively,NSSR or Traditional Reading.The action research was carried out for two rounds with 88 participants from Grade Eight of a junior high school in Nansha District,Guangzhou.In the first round,the participants carried out NSSR in class and in the second round the author tried to encourage the participants to conduct NSSR at home.The research found that NSSR influenced the 88 participants positively and explored the selection of NSSR materials and a reading mode suitable to junior high school students.The experimental research further compares which improves junior high school students' English reading performance better,NSSR or Traditional Reading.The participants were the same 88 students of the action research,divided into the experimental group(N=44)and the control group(N=44).The experimental group was instructed with NSSR and the control group was instructed with Traditional Reading.After the fourteen-week experiment,the two groups took a reading test.Analysis with SPSS 19.0 shows that the participants trained with NSSR made more progress in reading performance than those trained with Traditional Reading.Based on these findings,the thesis gives some suggestions on the application of NSSR on junior high school English reading.