A Study On Teaching Strategies,Methods And Effects Of Extracurricular Reading For Junior High School Students

As one of the basic skills and the main way to acquire knowledge, English reading is always regarded as an essential part of the language learning and teaching. Extracurricular reading has played an important role for the overall development of the EFL learners, because it is not only good for improving reading comprehension, but also an important way to get to know a new culture, a new way of thinking, feeling and acting. But now in junior high schools, English extracurricular reading is unsatisfactory. There is a great need for teachers and educators to find out a better approach to guide the EFL learners to get involved in English extracurricular reading.A large amount of research on extracurricular reading is carried out in China and other countries. All these practices and studies have proved that a planned extracurricular reading project with comprehensible reading materials can help students to develop reading skills and self-learning ability and promote the sustainable development of students. They provide us an important theory framework and the foundation for this study. This study will analyze the full process of teaching extracurricular reading and the effects of reading the specific original English materials which is both the basis and the highlight of the thesis. The thesis will also give an overall study on both teaching and learning based on reading original English materials Good English and the autonomous learning development. The combination of the two is also relatively new in the reading theory and teaching practice.The present study explores the teaching strategies, methods and effects of the four-month extracurricular reading program in Chengdu Shude High School Foreign Language Campus. Subjects are required to read 18 books form Good English Series 7.Four types of investigation, including questionnaires, interviews, teachers’diaries and tests, are used to collect data needed. The results of the data analysis show the improvement in both reading comprehension and learning autonomy, which means the learner-centered teaching methods and teaching strategies adopted in the reading program are effective and it’s possible to cultivate learning autonomy in the process of extracurricular reading. This study has also found that the teacher’s guidance is of great importance in the process of extracurricular reading. The teacher acts throughout as part organizer, observer, feedback organizer, and a role model of a reader.This thesis, at first, introduces the problems in the current extracurricular reading and presents the necessity of exploring effective teaching methods and strategies of extracurricular reading. Then it presents the relevant theories and studies on extracurricular reading as the theoretical foundation. After the literature review, the thesis presents the specific procedures of the extracurricular reading program under the guidance of the teacher. A sample lesson for the reading class every Friday is presented. Then it presents a discussion based on the results. At last, it concludes the whole thesis with the major findings, the implications, limitations of the study and suggestions for future study.