A Study On The Effect Of Graded Readers On Students’ Reading Motivation And Reading Ability In Senior High School

The English Curriculum Standard(2017)for senior high school makes certain requirements for students’ reading,requiring students at different stages to reach certain standard in their extracurricular reading.However,at present,the teaching model of English reading in our country is still dominated by teachers,which has made students lack the initiative and enthusiasm of English reading.Therefore,graded readers were introduced to reverse this situation.It refines students’ reading ability through the scientific analysis of the teenagers’ psychological and physiological characteristics.It provides different reading materials for students of different ages.It hasn’t been introduced into China for a long time as an extracurricular and original reading material.The research in this field is still in its infancy,and most of the previous researches mainly focus on the children in pre-school stage;thus,the research on the graded reading in the high school stage still needs to be developed urgently.Aiming at the special learning stage of senior high school students and combining with the requirements of the New Curriculum Standard(2017)for English reading teaching,this study tried to explore the impact of graded readers on the students’ reading ability and reading motivation with the purpose of providing some feasible suggestions for the future teaching of reading in English education.Therefore,this study focused on the following four research questions:(1)Can English graded readers effectively help senior high school students to improve extracurricular reading motivation in English? If yes,how?(2)What effect do graded readers have on senior high school students’ vocabulary size in English?(3)What effect do graded readers have on senior high school students’ reading efficiency in English?(4)What effect do graded readers have on senior high school students’ reading score in English?The author conducted her experiment in Class 1805 and Class 1804 of Senior Grade One in Youlan Middle School in Xing County of Shanxi Province.Class 1805 was selected as the experimental class(EC)and Class 1804 was the control class(CC),and both of them are the natural classes where the author once worked as a pre-service teacher.In order to guarantee the validity of the research,the author verified that the students’ English levels of these two classes are roughly same.Before the experiment,reading motivation,vocabulary size,reading efficiency,reading score of the students in the two classes were tested and questionnaires were distributed to the subjects for them to complete;then the writer introduced the graded readers Bookworm to the students in the EC who used one period of reading class per week to read the graded readers.Meanwhile,the students in the control class still followed the normal teaching schedule according to the school’s teaching arrangement.They read the 21 st century newspapers subscribed by the school for them.This study lasted for a semester,and after the experiment,the same questionnaires were given to the subjects again and the post-test was also completed.In order to achieve the purpose of the study more effectively,the writer interviewed some students in the experimental class after the experiment to get a deeper understanding of the students’ views on graded readers.Through the analysis of data from the questionnaires and the tests,the following conclusions were drawn.Firstly,the reading of graded readers can promote students’ reading motivation in English.Secondly,it also could help students to increase their vocabulary size,at the same time,it was conducive to students’ flexible use of vocabulary.Thirdly,the reading of graded readers can help students develop good reading habits to improve students’ reading efficiency.Furthermore,the improvement of reading efficiency and vocabulary size by reading for a long time will definitely lead to the improvement of students’ reading score.Finally,according to the conclusions of this study,the writer put forward some suggestions on the choice of English reading materials and English reading methods.