A Survey On The Status Quo Of English Reading Of Senior Middle School Students In Ethnic Minority Regions

English reading is an effective way of learning linguistic knowledge and improving English language competence. Besides, it is the main means for people to obtain the information from the outside world. How to improve the students’reading ability has been a heated issue for many years in the English teaching and learning of China. In2003, the Ministry of Education (ME) issued the New English Curriculum Standards for Senior Middle Schools (NECS), which advocate to cultivate students’overall language ability based on language skills, language knowledge, emotional attitude, learning strategy and cultural awareness, develop their ability of obtaining information, processing information, analyzing and solving problems and encourage the students to cultivate extensive reading interests and develop good reading habits. Senior-middle-school English reading has been the key and difficult point for senior middle school students’English learning. In NEMT, reading comprehension takes up a large percentage, up to40points. If the cloze test belonging to the type of reading in nature, is considered. The total score mounts to70points. Therefore, it is not easy to understand the new English curriculum reform has paid much attention to developing senior middle school students’reading ability. Nevertheless, at present, in many senior middle schools, especially in the ethnic minority areas, owing to their relatively traditional teaching methods as well as the unadvanced teaching conditions, the students’situation of English reading is rather worrying.Out of attention to the Status Quo of English reading of senior middle school students in ethnic minority regions, the present study investigated the current situation of300second-year students from six different classes at Rongshui Middle School in Rongshui Miao Autonomous County of Liuzhou City in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region through the questionnaires and interviews to the students. The collected data was analyzed in the form of descriptive statistics. Analysis and discussion of the outcomes of the interviews were made by classifying and summarizing them. This study involves the students’attitude towards reading, reading purpose, reading interest, extracurricular reading time, reading speed, reading habits, reading skills and strategies and the reading obstacles, and attempts to answer the following questions:(1). What is the Status Quo of senior middle school students’English reading in the ethnic minority regions on earth?(2). Which problems exist in their English reading learning? What guidance do they hope their teacher can give?(3). How do the teachers should guide the students in terms of reading materials, reading methods and reading strategies?(4). How should the ethnic students improve their ability of reading by themselves?This study, with three models of reading, schema theory, English language teaching and learning strategies and the reading requirements of NECS as its theoretical guidance, with the present author’s four-year English teaching experience in senior middle school as its practical guidance, attempts to find out the main existing problems in senior middle school students’ English reading in Rongshui Miao Autonomous County, such a remote and backward mountainous area, and tries to put forward some corresponding suggestions on how to improve the students’ reading ability by making full use of present teaching conditions. In addition, the present study is expected to make a contribution to facilitating the thorough implementation of Guangxi2012NECS.The results show that the ethnic senior middle school students’ major problems in English reading are as follows:1) Insufficiency of vocabulary;2) Poor in linguistic knowledge and competence, failure to analyzing long or complicated sentences;3) Less extensive extracurricular reading;4) Unfamiliar with reading skills;5) Imbalance in reading strategies use, more cognitive strategies and less monitor strategies, affective strategies, resource strategies;6) Existing some bad reading habits;7) Lack of autonomy in English reading;8) Insufficiency of cultural background knowledge. To the above-mentioned problems, the present author puts forward the following countermeasures:for the English teachers,1) Changing the traditional teaching mode;2) Improving ways to teach vocabulary;3) Introducing SQ3R into teaching;4) Encouraging students to read widely;5) Giving ways to tackle long and complex sentences;6) Introducing cultural background knowledge;7) Using multimedia assisting reading teaching. For the students, they should do the following:1) Developing vocabulary learning strategies2) Overcoming the bad reading habits consciously;3) Adopting reading strategies to reading;4) The enhancement of autonomy of reading.This thesis consists of six parts:Part One presents a general introduction, stating the background of the study from several aspects, discussing the significance of the study, and giving an overall structure of the study. Part Two contains a review of literature, mainly including theories of reading (definitions of reading, purposes of reading, characteristics of reading and the factors influencing reading), four models of reading, previous research on reading strategies abroad and at home and the principles for teaching reading. Part Three presents the details in the methodology of the investigation, including the objectives, subjects, and instruments of the research as well as the procedure of data collection. Part Four involves data analysis and discussion of the questionnaires and interviews. Furthermore, the author summarizes some major findings based on the statistical results. Part Five offers the corresponding suggestions for English teachers and students based on the major findings in Chapter Four. Part Six is the conclusion of the present research which includes a brief summary of the study, states limitations of the present research and puts forward suggestions for future study.