A Study Of The Effects Of English Picture Books On Higher-grade Pupils’ Reading

Reading is not only the major part of the English teaching, but also the importantskill of English learning. With the development of the society, the English course ispopularized in the primary school. And teachers put more attention on the teaching ofEnglish reading. However, because of the fixed traditional teaching ideas, the readingteaching in primary schools is facing some difficulties, including the selection of thereading materials.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One reviews reading problems andprevious studies on story一based reading. Chapter Two states the reading theories onpicture books reading Chapter Three describes the experiment on story一basedEnglish reading teaching in detail. In Chapter Four, the data of the experiment havebeen analyzed and discussed. And in Chapter Five the conclusion of the study thatstory- based English reading could improve higher graders’English reading abilityand arouse their reading interest has been drawn by analyzing the data. The purpose ofthis dissertation is to explore the possibility of using English picture books in the class,then to check its effects on improving students’reading efficiency. The dissertationwill focus on the following research questions: Is it feasible to use picture books tohigher grade students in the English reading teaching in primary schools; how toselect the English books which suit the Higher-grade students in the primary school.At last, this dissertation provides some suggestions for the teachers’study. Based onthe reading theories and the previous studies，this study carried out smoothly. Theresearch lasted for 3 months. The researcher chosen the stories that were near to thestudents’daily life and most of the stories had animals for their main charactersbecause these could arouse the students’interests on reading .The dissertation mainly adopts the experimental research method, the literaturereview method and the questionnaire research method and so on. In this study, theauthor takes two different classes as the subjects. And the two classes are divided intotwo groups: the experimental group and the control group. After the experiment, thedata is collected. Data were collected through a variety of instruments: Pre-test， Post-test，Pre-experiment and Post-experiment questionnaires and class observations.They were analyzed by SPSS1.5 and charts. Based on the data, the dissertation comesto the following conclusions:1. English picture books suit for the traits of the higher-grade student. The use of theEnglish picture books in the reading process can improve the students’readingefficiency, and stimulate the students’reading interest. Meanwhile, the studentscan increase the number of the vocabulary .And the students’readingcomprehension is improved significantly.2. The selection of the English picture books must follow a basic rule. Englishpicture books should be in accord with the cognitive traits of the students. Withthe simple sentences and the vivid pictures in the books, they can help the studentsarouse the reading interest.3. In the reading process, the teachers should carry out suitable activities after thereading teaching which can help improve the students’reading comprehension.According to the findings of the research, some pedagogical suggestions of picturebooks teaching for teachers are advanced:(1) Selecting proper reading materials for the students. Teachers should not only focuson the material of the text book. According to the Input Hypothesis，the stories chosenshould be suitable and higher slightly than the students’exiting language level. At thesame time, the stories should be interesting which are easy to make the studentsconcentrate on the meaning of the stories. When selecting the stories for the students，we should also keep the principles as follows. l) Being repetitive.2) Matching theTeaching aims.3) Matching the learners’language level. 4) Appropriating tostudents’interests.5) Being related to the students’daily experience.(2) Designing different reading activities. Teachers should have flexibility indesigning reading activities with different purposes. Students are required to work ondifferent reading tasks with specific purposes and acquire certain reading skills indifferent stages-pre-reading stage, while-reading stage and after-reading stage.