| Language input is crucial to language acquisition.Reading,as one of the main ways of language input,plays an essential role in English teaching.Nevertheless,there are still some problems in current English reading teaching in junior high schools.In terms of students,junior high school students are resistant to English reading,lack interest and have weak motivation to read English materials.In terms of teachers,although they have improved reading teaching mode and paid attention to the guidance of different reading strategies,there are still some problems concerning the selection and organization of reading materials.Stephen.D.Krashen(1981)proposed narrow reading and narrow input which means that reading a large number of materials about the same topic,theme or passages by one writer.Many studies have been done to find out that narrow reading has a positive impact on language learners' vocabulary accumulation,abilities of reading and writing.On the basis of previous studies,this paper applies narrow reading to junior high school English reading teaching in order to answer three research questions:(1)Can narrow reading increase English reading interest of junior high school students?(2)Can narrow reading improve English reading ability of junior high school students?(3)Does narrow reading have various effects on students with different English reading levels? If so,what are the effects respectively?Ninety students from two classes in Grade Nine of a junior high school in Huadu district,Guangzhou were selected as research subjects.In the experimental group(EG),narrow reading was used in reading teaching and traditional reading teaching was used in the control group(CG).The experiment lasted for 12 weeks.In the process of experiment,questionnaires,tests and interview were used as research instruments for data collection.Before the experiment,pre-questionnaire was conducted among the students in two classes to survey their attitudes and interest in English reading before the experiment.After completing the pre-questionnaire,pre-test was done by students in two classes to investigate reading ability before the experiment.10 weeks later,the differences in reading ability and interest of studentsin two classes were investigated by post-test and post-questionnaire respectively.Meanwhile,two students were randomly selected from EG with three different levels,a total of 6 students,to take part in the interview about their attitudes towards English reading and narrow reading as the supplementary data of questionnaires and tests.Two tests and two questionnaires collected in the experiment were quantitatively analyzed with t-test by using SPSS 22.0 which aims to compare the differences in English reading interest and ability between EG and CG and the data of interview was qualitatively analyzed aiming to further investigate different English reading levels students' different attitudes towards narrow reading.Specifically,the main conclusions of this research are as follows:(1)Narrow reading can increase English reading interest of junior high school students.(2)Narrow reading can improve English reading ability of junior high school students.(3)Narrow reading can affect mid-level students mostly while it has little effect on high-level and low-level students.Therefore,it is practical to apply narrow reading to junior high school English reading teaching.The major findings provide English teachers with some implications which are as follows:(1)Narrow reading can promote the accumulation of repeated vocabulary during the process of reading.(2)Narrow reading plays a positive role in accumulation of background knowledge of relevant materials.(3)Narrow reading can also allow students to accumulate a large number of schema.Junior high school English teachers can adopt narrow reading as a supplementary approach of English reading teaching.What's more,English teacher need to select and organize different levels narrow reading materials according to students' current English reading levels. |
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