On Problems And Cultivation Strategies In High School English Autonomous Reading

The society of the21st century is a society of knowledge and information, andlifelong learning is the mainstream of it. Only the people who are able to learn andwilling to learn cannot lag behind the development of the society. Hence, reading, as amain way of obtaining information and knowledge, is gaining more and moreattention. English reading plays a significant role in English learning. The teaching ofEnglish reading also becomes a key procedure of English teaching. However, with theinfluence of traditional teaching methods and teaching views, the teachingoveremphasizes teachers’ leading function and teachers control the whole class. Mostteachers neglect the subject status of students and ignore the cultivation of thestudents’ reading comprehension ability. The teaching process focuses on basiclanguage points, such as vocabulary and grammar, which leads to the low level of themotivation and interest in English learning.The National English Curriculum Standard s lays claim to high school students’reading quantity. It stipulates that except the textbook students who are in level6should read as many as180000English words; students in level7should read asmany as230000English words except the textbook; students in level8should readmore, in addition to the textbook, their extracurricular reading should arrive more than300000English words. It is obvious that the traditional English reading teachingmethod cannot meet the requirements of The National English Curriculum Standards.So it is very important to cultivate students’ autonomous reading ability.The autonomous reading ability is one reflection of autonomous ability inreading, a person who has the ability of autonomous reading should be interested inreading, should have active motivation in reading, can chose reading materials andmake a reading plan by herself/himself. She/He is able to use some useful readingstrategies to guide the reading process and can monitor the reading process initiativelyand assess the reading effectiveness. The autonomous reading emphasizes reader s’subjectivity and the full play of their initiative. The humanism theory, cognitive learning theory and constructive learning theoryare the three major basic theories of autonomic learning, and also provide theoryfoundation for cultivating students’ reading autonomy. The National EnglishCurriculum Standards (2013) points out that the English teaching needs to optimizestudents’ learning style and improve students’ autonomic learning ability. It alsostresses that cultivating students’ English autonomous reading ability should be thebasic and the most important task for high school English teaching. Hence, in Englishreading teaching, teachers should pay more attention to cultivate students’ readingautonomy.The research on autonomous learning in the field of language learning mostlystudies the language as a whole. Meanwhile, it mainly studies the non-English majorcollege students; there is little study on high school students’ autonomous reading.The paper focuses on the problems of high school students’ autonomous reading, triesto explore the causes and proposes some measures to improve students’ ability onautonomous reading.The research takes the192grade-one students from high school attached toShandong Normal University as the objectives. They are from class5, class6andclass8. The research studies students’ autonomous reading ability by the questionnaireand uses the Excel to analyze the collected data. Through the survey，the thesis findsthat high school students’ autonomous reading ability is relatively low, there areproblems in English reading interest, reading motivation and the use of readingstrategies. Most students are forced by outside pressure to read English materials.Theyread mainly to finish teachers’ assignment and lack of sufficient Englishreadingenthusiasm and reading motivation. Students have little knowledge of readingstrategies and don’t develop good reading habits. Students believe that the mostdifficulties of their English autonomous reading come from vocabulary, grammar andbackground information.The thesis tries to explore the causes that cause the proble ms and make somesuggestions and measures to cultivate high school students’ English autonomous reading ability, hoping that these suggestions and measures can cast a brick to attractjade for the high school teachers.