An Empirical Study On The Effects Of The English Picture Book Reading On Rural Middle School Students’ Reading Literacy

Recently,English reading literacy has attracted more and more attention from international education institutions as a competition of the soft power among governments.However,the awareness of cultivating students’ reading literacy has not widespread in country.Particularly the situation of English reading in rural areas is not optimistic.As an English teacher in rural middle school,it’ s imperative to create the environment for carrying out English reading activities to improve students’ English reading literacy.Under the guidance of the whole language approach,cognitive development stage theory and schema theory,this study puts forward to do experiments of extracurricular English reading activities in two parallel classes in the first grade of junior high school so as to explore the influence of English picture books on the reading literacy of junior high school students:1.What effects does English picture book reading have on the reading character of rural middle school students?2.What effects does English picture book reading have on the reading ability of rural middle school students?The study analyzed the reading literacy of two parallel classes.One is the experiment class that adopts English picture books as reading auxiliary materials while the other one is the control class that uses texts as reading auxiliary materials.And during the experiment,the data of questionnaires and tests are collected in the two classes,and then the following conclusions are drawn through comparative analysis:Firstly,English picture book reading can effectively improve students’ reading character,such as improving reading interest,enhancing reading confidence,and developing good English reading habits;Secondly,English picture book can improve students’ English reading ability to a certain extent.After the experiment,students are no longer afraid of the long and difficult passages in their English textbooks and they actively use dictionaries to understand reading contents;At the same time,students will take the initiative to complete the extra reading tasks everyday,and develop the good habits of recording new words and reciting them.All in all,picture book reading plays a positive role in promoting the cultivation of students’ reading literacy.As an auxiliary way to promote students’ reading literacy,it is feasible and effective to carry out English picture book reading in remote rural middle schools.Finally,this study summarized limitations of the experiment.The number of research subjects are small that research result is not representative;The experiment lasts not long that the research influence is not profound.It is hoped that the future research can be based on more research objects and longer experimental period,such as the study of reading activities for two or three years in the whole county.