The Research On The Effects Of Content-based Instruction On High School Students’ Autonomous Reading Ability

The new English Curriculum Standard for Senior High Schools puts great emphasis on cultivating students’autonomous reading ability. However, researches on improving students’ autonomous reading are less done than necessary and there are even less researches on integrating autonomous reading with Content-based instruction (CBI). This study is conducted to investigate whether the application of CBI in English reading class can help improve high school students’English autonomous reading ability.The research questions in this study are as follows:1) What is the current situation of senior high school students’English autonomous reading ability?2) Can CBI improve senior high school students’English autonomous reading ability? If so, which aspects are improved?3) Can CBI improve senior high school students’English reading scores?The subjects of this study are50students from Class5, Grade1and50students from Class6, Grade1of Jiangsu Wujin Senior Middle School. The research instruments of this study are a questionnaire and experiment. One questionnaire is conducted before the experiment to collect information on students’application of autonomy in English reading and the other is conducted after the experiment. The contents of the two questionnaires are the same. During the experiment, two reading tests including a pre-test and a post-test are conducted by the same students in class5and class6. The researcher collects the data and uses SPSS17.0to analyze the data.Analysis of the data of questionnaire and reading tests yields the following findings.Firstly, the current situation of high school students’autonomous reading ability before the experiment is not good and not satisfactory. The average scores of the five aspects of the autonomous reading ability are a bit low. The average score of students’motivation and attitudes towards English reading is3.13, the average score of making reading plans is2.29, the average score of choice and application of reading strategies is3.09, the average score of self-monitoring and self-evaluation is2.81, and the average score of adjustment of reading results is2.94. It indicates that students have less awareness of autonomous reading and seldom take actions to improve their abilities.Secondly, applying CBI to English reading class has a positive effect on improving high school students’autonomous reading ability in terms of the five aspects. Students’abilities in increasing reading motivation, making reading plans, choosing and applying reading strategies, monitoring the reading process, as well as adjusting the reading results have improved a lot. Among which, the score of students’ability of making reading plans has improved by0.38. The score of the ability self-monitoring and self-evaluation has improved by0.46. The research shows that applying content-based instruction to reading teaching classroom is an effective way to help students develop their autonomous reading ability.Thirdly, applying CBI to English teaching class has positive effect on improving high school students’reading scores. Compared with25.34, the average score of the experimental class in the pre-test, the average score of the post-test increases to26.54, which increases1.2points (P=0.000). However, the average score of the control class in the post-test only increases by0.06compared with the result of the pre-test. From this data, we can draw a conclusion that apply CBI to English reading class has positive effect on improving high school students’ reading scores.The study provides some implications. Firstly, teachers should assess students’reading ability and then select some reading materials according to students’reading ability so as to raise students’interests and cultivate students’ability of making reading plans. Secondly, Teachers should be able to connect content of language with language competence appropriately, as well as introducing students some useful reading strategies so as to make students have better understanding of the reading materials and take active part in the class freely.