The Application Of Guided Extra-curricular Reading In English Reading Teaching In High School

Nowadays, the New English Curriculum Standard points out "Just teaching the reading passages in the textbook is not enough to improve students' reading abilities. It is necessary to guide the students to read amount of reading materials out of textbook based on the characteristics of students." However, students'actual reading ability in senior high school do not a the high requirements of the New Curriculum Standard. Senior high school students have some common problems, such as small reading quantity and poor reading ability. The guided extra-curricular reading can expands students'reading scopes, help students to master reading strategies and improve their reading abilities. But previous studies on the guided extra-curricular reading were theoretical On the basis of this, the aim of the research is to explore an effective way to improve the English reading abilities of senior high school students.This research mainly focuses on three questions:(1) Can students'reading ability be significantly improved by the guided extra-curricular reading? (2) Have students'interest in English reading been stimulated by the guided extra-curricular reading? (3) Whether students use the reading strategies learned from the guided extra-curricular reading when they are doing reading?An experiment which lasted four months was carried out in this research. The subjects consisted of 92 second year students from Jing Le first middle school. The instruments of the experiment are questionnaires and reading comprehension tests.46 students were involved in the experimental class and 46 students in the control class. Before the experiment, all the subjects took part in the pre-test and their scores were analyzed by Statistic Package for Social Science 17.0. (SPSS 17.0) to examine whether the English reading ability of the two classes is at the same level. At the same time, a questionnaire was also applied to investigate status of students'extra-curricular reading. The researcher guided the extra-curricular reading in the experimental class, while in the control class, the students had the extra-curricular reading without the researcher's guidance. In the final week, all the subjects participated in the post-test. The researcher did another questionnaire for the experimental class students about their responses to the guided extra-curricular reading.The data collected in this research were analyzed by SPSS.17.0. By comparing the practice scores of reading tests and the questionnaires, the research found that after a semester of training, students'reading ability in the experimental class is significantly improved. Thus, the conclusion is:the guided extra-curricular reading can improve the students'reading ability and interest. What's more, they can use the reading strategies learned from the guided extra-curricular reading when they doing reading. In a nutshell, the guided extra-curricular reading has a positive effect on English reading teaching.