| Extracurricular reading is usually seen as an important manner to further the development of students‘ knowledge infrastructure and to build up their habits of lifelong learning.As an exploratory activity of learning,it has several mixed features: teacher-guided but self-regulated,complementary but crucial.Compared to the course of Chinese,the teaching practices of English have not yet given proper attention to extracurricular reading.Besides their textbooks,what materials should EFL students read,how should they organize their reading activities,how deep should their activities reach? Questions of this kind are still open to teachers and researchers.In the phase of junior high school,students in general have obtained the needs of exploration and abilities of rational thinking.Students in Shanghai normally have acquired a considerable amount of vocabulary and knowledge of English language after learning English for five years in primary s chools.Therefore,they are ready for a systematic and ordered scheme of EFL extracurricular reading.According to leveled reading teaching method,teachers are required to provide their students with not only chall enging but also enjoyable materials,i.e.intense mental efforts are needed from students in order to acquire new knowledge.Meanwhile,the process of reading should be enjoyable rather than frustrating and students‘ interests shall not be jeopardized or sacrificed when reading English materials.The present research assumes that application of leveled reading method to English teaching in junior high school is helpful to preservation of students‘interests,to enhancement of their linguistic knowledge,and to cultivation of their critical thinking and cultural awareness.These aspects are all consistent to the demands of Core Competences of English as a school discipline.Beneficial effects of leveled extensive reading activities are also reflected as intrinsic duties of the course of English towards students‘ personal development.Based on such assumption,this research focuses on the following two questions: 1.Would leveled reading improve junior high school students‘reading strategies? 2.What effect could leveled reading bring to cultivation of students‘ reading ability? Around 70 grade seven students from Shanghai Experimental School participated in the research and they are divided into the Experimental Class(EC)and the Control Class(CC)with roughly same size.Five articles(together with relevant tests)from Level One,Oxford Dominoes Series are adopted as reading materials and each one is self-taught by students but guided by teachers for two weeks.Reading activities used in the experiment process include Pre-reading Guide,While-reading Analyses,Post-reading Reflections,and Extensive Reading Tasks such as group discussion,group drama,etc.The experiment conducts pretest and posttest for two classes mainly on students‘ language proficiency and their vocabularies.Questionnaires and interviews are applied to investigate students‘ views on English leveled reading materials and reading forms.The data of the research reveal that the leveled reading can effectively enlarge students‘ vocabulary,broaden their knowledge,enhance their reading interest and cultivate their critical thinking ability.Students‘ English literacy as well as their reading strategies has also been greatly improved after the ten weeks‘ teaching experiment.This research also brings new idea to future English teaching in junior high school. |
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