An Experimental Research On Genre-based English Teaching Of Extra-curricular Extensive Reading In Senior High School

Reading is a key and difficult part of National Matriculation English Test(NMET).There is even a view that “the world belongs to those who read well”.Only when curricular intensive reading teaching and extra-curricular extensive reading are combined organically,with the former taking the major pole and the latter as a supplement,can English reading teaching in high school be satisfactory.Although extra-curricular extensive reading has long been paid as much attention as curricular intensive reading,the level of practices and implementation extent is far less.Hence the present situation of extensive reading teaching is that teachers must “look before leaping”.In this process of try and error,few theory views have been put forward and some experience has been accumulated.However,a relatively mature teaching mode,which could be easily generalized,is still not in place now.For this reason,after extensive pre-literature investigation,it is suggested in this thesis that applying Genre theory to guide extracurricular reading teaching design could possibly has a positive impact on students’ reading performance.Hence a teaching experiment was carefully designed and performed to try out this hypothesis.Krashen’s input hypothesis,schema theory,and genre theory,lay theoretical foundation for this study.Appreciation of Helbling fictions and Model United Nations(MUN)activities are chosen as the main teaching contents.An in-class and out-class combined teaching mode is employed.Questionnaires,data investigation and analysis,classroom tests and interviews are adopted as research methods.The major question of this study is: can genre-based extensive reading teaching have a positive role in promoting students’ reading interests and reading abilities?The results from questionnaires before the teaching experiment indicate that extra-curricular extensive reading teaching and genre-based methods are undervalued by both teachers and students.Meanwhile,The results from data investigation and analysis of the genre and the genre distribution of texts from Reading Comprehension of NMET and Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press(FLTRP)teaching materialsshows that,if taking NMET as the appropriate criterion for genre distribution,genre distribution of the FLTRP textbooks is reasonable on the whole,with only minor inconsistencies.A teaching experiment,which lasted for a semester,was performed.Tracking the whole experimental procedure,it’s found that after genre-based methods introduced,reading interests and confidence of students from the test group are raised rapidly and notably.Comparisons of test scores before and after the experiment between the two classes indicate that,the test group made greater progress in reading ability than the control group.These results mean that the genre-based extra-curricular extensive reading teaching method suggested in this study played a good role.