A Research On The Extracurricular English Learning Of Junior High School Students

English learning attaches great importance to practice and real language environment.However,due to the restriction of the teaching hours,students still have great deficiencies in learning through practice because of learning environment.So,it must be compensated by extracurricular learning.Therefore,extracurricular English learning has been one of the important topics for English learning and teaching for a long time.Over the past few years,a large number of researches on extracurricular learning have been done and many achievements have already been gained.However,most of the researches took university students or senior high school students as the research subjects,but there are few ones aiming at junior high school students.In the long process of English learning,the influence of the stage of junior high school on students cannot be ignored.Therefore,it is not only necessary but also important to study the extracurricular English learning of junior high school students.Inspired by Krashen’s input theory and constructivism theory,both quantitative and qualitative methods are used to investigate junior high school students’ extracurricular English learning by taking 162 students of Grade Eight as the subjects,who are from the Middle School Attached to Zhanjiang Normal University in Zhanjiang,Guangdong.The study focuses on the following three issues:(1)What is the basic status of junior high school students’ extracurricular English learning?(2)What are the major problems that junior high school students are faced with in their extracurricular English learning and what are the reasons for them?The results of the study are as follows:(1)In general junior high school students show positive attitude towards extracurricular English learning.(2)Junior high school students generally think that extracurricular English learning is to complete the homework assigned by the teachers and the main purpose of their extracurricular English learning is to get good English grades.(3)Junior high school students have the ability to use the strategies in extracurricular English learning.(4)Both parents and teachers attach great importance to students’ extracurricular English learning.(5)Junior high school students have some common problems in their extracurricular English learning.For example,they do not know how to use communicative strategies efficiently and how to choose learning materials for learning out of class;they have no idea of how to arrange the time for learning out of class,and they lack instructive help when they have problems in extracurricular English learning.They can’t make good use of the Internet to learn English out of class and so on.Based on the research results,the corresponding suggestions for teachers,students and schools are put forward.First,teachers should optimize English classroom teaching to stimulate students’ interest in learning,scientifically and reasonably help students to combine classroom learning with English extracurricular learning,and guide students to properly use learning strategies in their extracurricular English learning.Furthermore,students are supposed to further improve their understanding of extracurricular English learning and make good use of the internet to carry out extracurricular English learning in the network environment.Last but not least,schools are expected to carry out more extracurricular English activities for students for the purpose of exploring and developing more methods and platforms of extracurricular English learning for junior high school students.