Effects Of Narrow Reading Training On Senior High School Students’Reading Performance

While English reading plays a vital role in learners’English learning,the effect of English reading teaching is not that satisfying and more effective teaching methods are desired to a great extent.Recent researches by many experts and teachers demonstrate that the application of narrow reading in reading teaching can help expand students’vocabulary,enrich their background knowledge and familiarize them with the organization of the reading passages.In light of this,this research,therefore,conducts an empirical study,investigating the effects of narrow reading training on senior high school students’English reading performanceBased on the Input Hypothesis,Affective Filter Hypothesis and Schema Theory,this research addresses the following two questions(1)What effect can narrow reading have on senior high school students’reading interest and reading habits?(2)Can narrow reading have effect on the students’reading comprehension ability?If yes,what specific effect can narrow reading have on students’ comprehension ability to search for specific information,to reason,to summarize,and to guess?The research is undertaken in a senior high school in Huaian City,Jiangsu Province with 96 students in the two parallel classes participating in.Interview,tests,questionnaires serve as means to collect the data.Questionnaire can be divided into three sections,including reading interest,reading habits and reading comprehension abilities.Tests contain four reading materials to investigate students’four dimensions of reading comprehension ability.Questionnaires and tests are conducted before and after the experiment with the intention of finding out whether narrow reading training affects students’ reading interests,reading habits and reading comprehension abilities.The author also interviews six students from the experimental class for reasons why such effects are produced after the experiment.All the data collected from questionnaires and tests are analyzed by SPSS software 24.0The research findings can be concluded as follows:(1)Narrow reading training can enhance students’interest in reading by exposing students to the repeated background knowledge of the same topic and familiarize them with the structure of the same genre.The improved reading interests can make students willing to read and develop better reading habits(2)After the experiment,the results of the experimental class increases greatly,which proves that the narrow reading training can improve students’ reading comprehension ability to search for specific information,to reason,to summarize,and to guess.The mean of the experiment class in the pre-questionnaire concerning four dimension of reading comprehension ability is 16.36 which grows to 19.04 in the post-questionnaire after experiment(p=0.05).Meanwhile,the mean of the experimental class in the post-test rises by 1.92 points compared to that in the pre-test(p=0.000).however,the mean of the controlled class in the questionnaires and tests have no significant difference before and after experiment.In summary,narrow reading training indeed affects students four dimension of reading comprehension ability positivelySome pedagogical implications are provided based on the results of the experiment.Firstly,the topics and genres of supplementary materials should be in accordance with the topics and genres of the texts in order not to affect the teaching progress.Secondly,teachers should try to choose the reading materials that correspond to students real level.Thirdly,teachers should give their students supportive guidance and instruction to ensure the effects of narrow readingAlthough the research assumption is validated by teaching experiment,some limitations exist unavoidablely.For example,the research sample size is only 96 students which is not large enough,and 12 weeks is not long enough for a research.