The Application Of An English Newspaper In The English Reading Teaching Of Senior High School

As is well known, reading is a basic skill and has an important influence in theEnglish teaching, it is also a major way for everybody to gain information in theconstantly changeable world. What’s more, as is required in the new English curriculum,senior middle school students are able to read English newspapers or magazines aftertheir graduation, meanwhile English reading tests in the college entrance examinationbecome more live and real, so cultivating the reading abilities is a very significant task forevery English teacher. However, only depending on textbooks is not enough to improvesenior middle school students’ reading capabilities, and the new English curriculum insenior high school points out that English teachers should positively take advantage ofvideotape, newspapers, magazines and network in order to improve English learningefficiency. Besides, because an English newspaper is the cheap, convenient, distinctivereading material, in recent years, more and more English teachers are interested innewspaper reading teaching and some of them have tried to do some researches aboutEnglish newspaper teaching so as to make up for the disadvantages of textbooks.In this thesis, based on models about reading teaching, Krashen’s theory,constructivism, characteristics of the21st century English newspaper and its functions inEnglish reading teaching, the author applied the English newspaper into the readingteaching of senior high school to check whether the students’ reading abilities can beimproved or not, test effectiveness and feasibility of the English newspaper readingteaching. The experiment was carried through in two parallel classes in Senior One,including sixty students in each class and it lasted for five months. Before the experiment,students in the two classes had a final examination in the last semester and were at thesimilar level from the results, so one class was chose as the experimental class, andanother as the control class. The experimental class was taught with the21st centuryEnglish Newspaper and textbooks, while the control class was taught with textbooks. Andthe experiment was successfully carried out by the pre-test, the during-test and thepost-test, the findings was that compared with the control class, the experimental class have obviously improved their reading levels after the experiment.In brief, this experiment has a good result and encourages more English teachers toapply the English newspaper into the teaching practice. At last, the author gives somelimitations about the experiment.