A Case Study Of Improving Senior High School Students' Reading Ability Through Autonomous Extracurricular Reading

In foreign language learning,reading ability is not only an important component of language ability,but also an effective means of language learning.Although the significance of reading has been widely recognized,there are still many problems existing in students' English reading practice,such as lack of reading interest,inadequate reading ability' low reading efficiency and etc.Hence the development of students' English reading ability is still unsatisfactory.To improve the present situation of high school students' English reading,we should not only rely on the limited input of reading materials in the classroom but also extensive English reading practice after class.Thus,the effectiveness of using English extracurricular reading to improve students' reading interest and ability is a question worth studying.This thesis attempts to apply extracurricular English reading into high school students' English learning with the purpose of exploring its effectiveness in improving senior high school students' English reading interest and ability.In this study,a class of students from F senior high school in Wuhu is selected as the research subject to explore the current situation of students' extracurricular reading.Then,six students(two at each of the high,intermediate and low English levels)in this school are chosen as the subjects of the case study to conduct the autonomous extracurricular reading experiment.This study attempts to answer the following three questions:(1)What is the present situation of students' extracurricular reading in the senior high school?(2)Does autonomous extracurricular reading have positive effects on enhancing students' reading ability?(3)Does autonomous extracurricular reading have different effects on improving reading literacy of students at different English levels?The study lasts for twelve weeks.Four instruments are adopted during the study:questionnaire,interview,reading tests and tracking observation.With the help of SPSS 22.0,the statistics of reading tests score and questionnaire are computed and analyzed.The major findings of this case study are:(1)At present,students are less interested in English reading.Although students are aware of the significance of extracurricular reading,they rarely read after class.They lack the intrinsic motivation for reading,and their reading investment is far from sufficient.(2)Autonomous extracurricular reading can improve students' English reading ability effectively.In the extracurricular reading experiment,through providing a large amount of comprehensible input,improvements happen not only in the reading performance of students but also in their reading processing efficiency(reading test scores/reading time).As an extension to the classroom reading teaching,extracurricular reading has a positive effect on improving students' English reading ability.(3)Autonomous extracurricular reading has different effects on reading literacy of students at different levels.Among them,the improvement of low English level group students is the most obvious,and the reading character of high English level group students is the most significant.Therefore,autonomous extracurricular reading is recommended to senior high school reading teaching to assist classroom teaching,so as to improve students'reading ability.In addition,teachers should also give guidance on students,extracurricular reading and provide positive feedback to help achieve better results.