An Empirical Study Of The Effects Of Extracurricular Graded Reading On Junior Middle School Students' English Reading Literacy

Core literacy cultivation has become the primary curriculum goal in all countries.Reading,as an effective way of input language,is the key to the cultivation of English core literacy.Therefore,the cultivation of reading literacy has appealed to widespread attention.However,the current reading situation is not so satisfactory,and students' reading literacy is at a relatively low level.Some researches have proved that graded reading has positive effects on English learning but there is little research on the effects of graded reading literacy,especially empirical research in China.Additionally,the existing researches mainly focus on students in primary school.Therefore,the thesis,based on the PIRLS reading literacy assessment framework,aims to explore what effects extracurricular graded reading will have on junior high school students' reading literacy.Under the guidance of the Krashen's input hypothesis,affective filter hypothesis and the whole language approach,this thesis addresses the following questions:1)What are the effects of extracurricular graded reading on students' reading attitudes?2)What are the effects of extracurricular graded reading on students' reading behaviors?3)What are the effects of extracurricular graded reading on students' reading proficiency?In the study,two classes in Grade Seven were selected as subjects.One class is the experimental class,participating in extracurricular graded reading project.The other class is the controlled class with no graded extracurricular reading.The research lasted for a semester.Before and after the experiment,the reading attitudes,behaviors and reading proficiency of the two classes were tested.Subsequently,the data were analyzed by SPSS 22.0.The major findings are as follows:1)Extracurricular graded reading has positive effects on students' reading attitudes.After the experiment,the reading attitudes of students in the experimental class were much more positive than before.But for the students in the controlled class,their attitudes showed a little negative trend.2)Extracurricular graded reading has positive effects on students' reading behaviors.The reading frequency and reading quantity of students in the experimental class were significantly improved while there was no significant improvement in the controlled class.Concerning the reading strategies,both classes performed better than before.But students in the experimental class made greater progress.3)Extracurricular graded reading has positive effects on students' reading proficiency.Students in the experimental class performed much better than before,yet there was no observed increase in the controlledclass.To sum up,extracurricular graded reading has positive effects on junior high school students' reading literacy.This experiment provides effective guidance for the improvement of students' reading literacy.However,due to short duration of the research and without considering other contexts of extracurricular reading,there are still some limitations in this study.Future research should carry on to explore the effects of graded reading on students' reading literacy under different contexts such as family,school and curriculum contexts.