An Investigation On Senior High School Students’ Extracurricular English Reading Under The New English Curriculum Standards

Today we are coming into the 21 stcentury. All people around the world are getting more and more interrelated to one another, just like living in a small village. In this era,China has been becoming more and more involved in frequent interaction with other countries in the world.English has become a very important language for contemporary people to survive in this new era and English learning has become a buzz term at present. As an important means for getting information, reading definitely plays a vital role in improving students’ English ability. However, reading time in class is much too limited and textbooks are far from enough to meet the requirements for senior high school students’ reading stipulated in the New English Curricular Standards, thus it’s necessary for senior high school students to make good use of their after-class time to do extracurricular English reading.Extracurricular English reading is an important part of English language learning,which can help widen senior high school students’ knowledge span, develop their good reading habits, raise their language awareness, develop their cultural attainment, and act as an instrumental and humanistic tool to achieve quality education for senior high school students’ all-round development.As we all know, senior high school is an important period for students to increase their knowledge and broaden their horizon. It is necessary for students to attach importance to the improvement of their reading comprehension and English ability.However, at present, the society, teachers, parents, and even students do not seem to pay enough attention to English reading, especially extracurricular reading.The New English Curriculum Standards concentrate on cultivating senior high school students’ comprehensive ability to use English, and it also gives detailed requirements for improving senior high school students’ basic English reading ability and sets the exact amount of extracurricular English reading for senior high school students. According tothe New English Curriculum Standards(MOE, 2003), the total amount of extracurricular English reading for senior high school students is supposed to add up to above 360,000 words. But how is the current situation of senior high school students’ extracurricular English reading? Are they motivated enough to do extracurricular English reading? Can they set goals and make plans in their extracurricular English reading? Do they have abundant reading materials? Can they choose proper reading materials by themselves? Are they able to apply different reading strategies? Can they monitor and assess their reading process? In order to find the answers to all the above questions, the author of this thesis, a teacher with more than 10 years teaching in senior high school, conducts an investigation on the current situation of senior high school students’ extracurricular English reading under the new English Curriculum Standards, taking Huanggang No.1 Senior High School as an example.In order to achieve the goal, the author designs a questionnaire and some interview questions to analyze the status quo of senior high school extracurricular English reading.Through the survey data, the author finds that there are some problems for senior high school students’ extracurricular reading: lack of motivation for extracurricular English reading, being unable to set goals and make plans, being unable to choose appropriate materials, being not well trained to apply reading strategies, and being unaware and unable to self- monitor and self-assess their extracurricular reading, etc.In view of the status quo of senior high school students’ extracurricular reading mentioned above, the author analyses the reasons for the phenomenon in brief and suggests that measures should be taken from the perspectives of students, teachers and parents. On the one hand, it is teachers’ and parents’ responsibility to activate, monitor,assess students’ extracurricular reading and provide suitable reading materials and guidance to students. On the other hand, students are supposed to pay more attention to their planning of extracurricular reading, proper adoption of reading strategies, self-monitoring and self-assessing their own extracurricular reading.