English Extracurricular Input In Junior High Schools

The National English Curriculum Standard(2011)(NECS) requires that junior high school students should read at least 150000 words outside class. Many experts have studied English input and factors affecting the effect of input in class, but few researchers have studied English input outside class.This paper presents a study carried out in 4 junior high schools. The subjects involved are 502 junior two students, 40 junior English teachers and 430 parents as well.The main purpose of this study is to investigate the junior high school students’ attitudes towards EEI, amount, content, ways, resources and obstacles of EEI. The data is collected mainly through questionnaires and analyzed by means of frequency statistics and Chi-square test of independence. The findings of the data analysis are as follows:Most students don’t know the importance of the EEI, and more than two thirds of them are not interested in it and have negative attitudes towards it. In all, almost all the students’ EEI amount is small and far from the requirement of the NESC. The causes of this kind of situation are that the content of EEI is too hard and uninteresting. Students prefer audio-visual mode than just listening or reading to input English outside class.Also, they believe that face to face communication or communication through QQ or Wechat is the most effective way to promote EEI. In addition, they are in the hope that teachers and parents can give more guidance and support to use network resources to choose their favorite content for EEI.Based on the findings mentioned above and theories of SLA, the thesis suggests that teachers and parents should make use of the network resources to help students choose favorite comprehensible input to arouse students’ interest in EEI so as to increase students’ extracurricular input and improve their English level.