An Empirical Study On Utilizing English Newspapers As A Teaching Aid In Vocational College English Reading Classrooms

From the current practical situation of English reading teaching in vocationalcolleges in China, students lack interests in English reading. So the key to the Englishteaching reform in vocational colleges is to change the monotonicity of readingteaching and English students’ learning attitudes and to stimulate students’ interest inEnglish reading. Undoubtedly it’s a new try to introduce English newspaper reading tovocational college English reading classrooms.The research questions are:1) As a teaching aid, can English newspaper readingimprove students’ reading ability?2) From which aspects does English newspaperreading affect students’ English learning?The research objects are two parallel classes totaled60students in2011-gradeTourism Management major of HNVC Vocational School in Yueyang City, Class2011(5) and Class (6) which are taught by the author. In this research, qualitative andquantitative research methods are adopted: questionnaire, experimental teaching, tests,and interviews. With the teaching experiment in one class, the research tries toexplore the feasibility and effectiveness of English newspapers assisting readingteaching. Meanwhile, with the questionnaire and interview, it tries to evaluate theeffect of English newspapers employed by the students as auxiliary learning materials.The research tools include “Twenty-first Century English Newspaper”(2011-2012academic years) sponsored by China Daily,2questionnaires and2tests.The research findings are that:1) Utilizing English newspapers as a teaching aidin vocational college English reading classrooms can improve students’ Englishreading ability to a certain extent;2) As a teaching supplementary means, Englishnewspaper also makes effect on students’ English learning from different aspects: itcan stimulate the vocational college students’ interest in English learning, help thestudents expand vocabulary, and extend their cultural background knowledge.Moreover, English newspaper reading has a prominent effect on cultivating thestudents’ reading strategy and good reading habits.There are still some limitations of this research, which is manifested that theobjects of this research are only limited to students in Grade One of a vocationalcollege, and the teaching approaches in English newspapers reading class need to befurther improved. Meanwhile, the selection of reading articles also needs to reach amore scientific standard. All of above can provide suggestions for further studies so as to improve students’ English writing ability and cross-culture communication ability.