A Study Of Senior High School Students' English Extracurricular Reading Under The Background Of New College Entrance Examination Reform

The new college entrance examination(CEE)reform places more emphasis on the importance of English reading comprehension,which means that it is increasingly important to cultivate students' reading ability.However,focusing on classroom reading teaching only can not meet the requirements of new CEE,while English extracurricular reading(EER),as the effective supplement and extension of classroom teaching,is commonly regarded as a great way to broaden students' horizons and improve their English reading ability.By adopting students' questionnaire and teachers' interview as the research method,this study,with 200 students and 10 English teachers as research participants,makes an exploration to answer three questions concerning students' attitudes towards EER,their actual performance in EER and the factors that have affected their reading.This study reveals that under the background of CEE reform,the current situation of EER in senior high schools is not optimistic.Although more than half of the students have realized that EER is of great help in enlarging their vocabulary,enhancing language sense and broadening horizons and knowledge,some of them simply do it for the practical purpose of getting higher scores in the EER.It is also found that a large number of students have no access to reading materials and are at a loss about how to use reading strategies to improve their reading.In addition,most students do not take notes while reading,because they have not developed good reading habits.On the whole,students' performance in extracurricular reading is not as satisfactory as it is expected.The unsatisfactory result of EER is due to many factors,such as students' limited vocabulary,limited time for doing reading,teachers' weak motivation in organizing extracurricular reading and the unreasonable evaluation system on the part of the school,etc.In short,EER in senior high schools is not conducted smoothly.Based on the problems with EER under the background of CEE,some useful and targeted suggestions and measures are put forward to help improve the students' readingability.It is hopeful that these measures may offer teachers some enlightenment and inspirations to implement EER more effectively on the one hand,and enable students to promote their reading ability.