| The release of the new Curriculum Standards of compulsory education(2022)indicates that our English curriculum reform has further moved into the era of core literacy.The new curriculum standards emphasize that English teachers should conduct teaching based on the discourse.Students of different ages are graded into levels with different requirements for each level which not only specify the topics of the discourse,but also put forward more detailed and quantifiable requirements for students’ extracurricular English reading.For example,the primary school students of upper grades have to do extracurricular English reading with the amount of 4000 to5000 words.Topics are emphasized,as well as genres,reading amount and so on.However,there are still some problems in the in-class and extracurricular English reading for primary school students: the reading method is almost the same,which is mainly based on test-oriented reading.That is,the students complete corresponding exercises after simple oral reading or silent reading.They seldom do extracurricular English reading and lack the awareness and the reading habit as well.They are somehow afraid of English reading and could hardly persist.The teachers claimed that they could hardly find a time to help students conduct extracurricular English reading.Scaffolded Silent Reading(hereafter ScSR)originates from Sustained Silent Reading(hereafter SSR)and has gradually emerged in recent years.By reviewing the literature,we found that there were more studies abroad on ScSR than domestic ones.Researchers abroad actively compared ScSR with other reading methods,like Oral Reading(hereafter OR),which is rarely seen in domestic studies.Meanwhile,studies abroad focused more on primary school students.In comparison,domestic studies chose middle or university students as the participants.Moreover,the previous studies focused on the effects of ScSR on students’ reading achievement,fluency or attitude instead of an integrated literacy,which is inconsistent with the integrated cultivation of students’ ability,habit and attitude required by the new curriculum standards.Thus,this study chose English reading literacy as one key component,which consists of both reading ability and reading character.By conducting ScSR and OR and comparing their effects,this research wants to find a more effective method for the extracurricular English reading for primary school students to improve their reading literacy,as well as to better help realize the implementation of the new curriculum standards.It aims to answer the following questions:(1)What is the effect of ScSR on primary school students’ English reading literacy?(2)What is the effect of OR on primary school students’ English reading literacy?(3)What is the difference between the effects of ScSR and OR on primary school students’ English reading literacy? And why?The research included eighty-six students from two classes,Class 10 and Class12 of Grade 4 of the Primary school affiliated to Shanghai Sixth Normal University.They were taught by the same English teacher.Class 12(n=43)was selected as the experimental group and used ScSR,while Class 10(n=43)was the control group and used OR.To control the variables in this research,the OR reading was also used with the scaffolds in ScSR.The procedures for both groups were almost the same,except for the reading method.The procedures include: pre-test,the introduction of the experiment and rules making,building the classroom English book library,guidance on the selection of books;ScSR/OR reading,teacher-student individualized conference,after-reading sharing activities;post-test and questionnaire.The experiment lasted one month.The time for both groups was thirty minutes during the self-study time from 12:10 to 12:40 and from Monday to Friday,in which there were15-minute reading time.Every Friday was set to allow the students to share their reading.The scaffolds include building the English book library,the guidance on the selection of books,the 5-minute instruction of reading strategies and skills before each reading,teacher-student individualized conference and helping students to set reading goals and design reading sharing activities.After the experiment,the effects of ScSR and OR and their differences in primary school students’ English reading literacy were shown by analyzing the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental class and control class.The results show that both ScSR and OR would cause positive effects on primary school students’ English reading literacy.However,ScSR could significantly improve students’ theme comprehension ability and the ability to infer the meaning of the words in the context.It is also better than OR in helping students to building and cultivating English reading habits and improving their reading experience.OR works better than ScSR in improving their decoding ability,increase their reading fluency and accuracy.Besides,both ScSR and OR did not cause significant improvements in students’ ability to check detailed information,judge and reason.Based on the findings,suggestions were made that primary schools could arrange relevant English reading class or set fixed reading time in order to help students to read lots of books with different topics and genres in the critical period.In this way,the interest in English reading could be aroused and the life-long reading habits could be built more easily.Moreover,when conducting reading,teachers could choose different reading methods for different goals,like using ScSR for comprehension and OR for reading fluency and accuracy.Teachers and parents should guide students to choose suitable reading materials that they are interested in and is consistent with their independent reading level.Various reading sharing activities could be used to prompt reading,help students build reading habits and improve English reading literacy. |
