An Investigation Of Chinese Urban Junior High School Students' English Reading Frequency, Attitude And Their Correlations With English Reading Achievement

The importance of English reading has always been emphasized in English as a Foreign Language(EFL)education in China.In recent years Chinese EFL educators have introduced the concept of “Foreign Language(FL)Reading Literacy” which focuses not only on reading comprehension ability but also on reading attitude and behaviors.However,most of EFL reading studies in China have centered on intensive reading instructions and very few researches report Chinese students' extensive English reading frequency and attitude.The current study aims to investigate Chinese urban junior high school students' extensive English reading frequency and their extensive reading attitude.Furthermore,this thesis explores factors that influence students' extensive English reading attitude and frequency as well as the relationship between students' extensive English reading attitude/frequency and students' English reading achievement.103 junior high school students in the Chinese northwestern city Xi'an participated in the study by filling the English Reading Questionnaire which consists of items about their extensive English reading attitude,frequency as well as other factors.Besides,students' TOEFL Junior reading scores were collected and used as a representation of their English reading achievement.In addition,Statistical Package for Social Science Version 24(SPSS 24)was employed to analyze the data.With descriptive statistical analysis,the findings are that nearly a third of participants read English for pleasure at least once a week or more often,which wasthe most frequent extensive English reading group in the current study.Although half of participants scored on positive attitude,more than a third of population were low frequent English readers.To determine factors that influence students' extensive English reading attitude and frequency,multiple regression analysis was applied and the results indicated that“access to English books out of class” was a significant predictor of both students' extensive English reading attitude and extensive English reading frequency.Furthermore,bivariate correlation analysis indicated that no significant correlation existed between extensive English reading attitude and English reading achievement nor did a significant correlation exist between extensive English reading frequency and reading achievement.The study indicates that vacation can be a good time for students to read independently and extensively.Teachers also need to teach students some reading strategies as well as tips about how to select English reading materials.It is also suggested that schools or English teachers provide students with appropriate and interesting English reading materials,which hopefully help promote students' English reading attitude and build their reading proficiency.