A Study Of English Extracurricular Reading In Senior High Schools From The Perspective Of Key Competencies

With the continuous progress of the reform of New Curriculum and the implementation of the 2017 version of English Curriculum Standard for Senior High School,more and more attention has been paid to the development of students into comprehensive talents.Under the background of New English Curriculum Standard,the Ministry of Education(MOE)have highlighted the importance of extracurricular reading and issued the detailed requirements of basic English reading ability and the reading quantity for high school students which are good for the cultivation of students' key competencies.As an adjunct of class English learning,English extracurricular reading greatly broadens students' horizon and effectively arouses students' interests in English learning with its rich contents and various forms,and it also plays an active role in enhancing students' English learning ability.Therefore,senior high school English teachers should try to carry out the basic concepts and rationales of the New English Curriculum Standard by guiding the students to read more,making full use of various extracurricular reading resources,cultivating students' extracurricular reading ability and developing students' key competencies in English in the end.English Extracurricular reading has been studied by many scholars and teachers at home and abroad,actually,they have made fruitful studies about it.However,studies based on English extracurricular reading from the perspective of key competencies are comparatively limited and scarce.This thesis took it as the breakthrough point to probe the current situation of English extracurricular reading in senior high schools from the perspective of English key competencies.According to the four dimensions of English key competencies which are known as language ability,learning ability,thinking ability and cultural awareness,the author selected some students and teachers as the participants from senior three in Xinying Middle School of Kunming.The thesis makes a survey with a questionnaire,a test,an interview and case analysis to study the current situation of English extracurricular reading in Xinying Middle School from the perspective of key competencies.Finally,the thesis concludes that the current situation of which is not optimistic,for example,students' interest and initiative are not strong,students are unable to choose extracurricular reading materials properly,they lack the critical and creative thinking ability.What's more,the results from statistic also show that differences between liberal arts and science students have some effect on the students' English key competencies in some aspects and this is also a problem need to discuss in the future.The thesis is divided into five chapters,the author first introduces the importance of English extracurricular reading and the potential problems in senior high school at present.Then it presents the relevant theories and researches at home and abroad in the literature review.After that,the research methods and findings of the study were reported,the results were discussed carefully as well.Finally,it puts forward the pedagogical implications,the inadequacies of the research and the suggestions for future research.