| Reading interest works as a significant factor in improving language learners’ reading competence.According to the latest National English Curriculum Standards,junior high school students should read a total of 60,000 to 80,000 words in extracurricular reading.However,under the heavy burden of exams,junior high school students are deficient in reading interest.Nowadays,many junior high schools have experimented on using picture books as extracurricular reading materials.However,teachers fail to emphasize the graphic features and ratios of the reading materials and concentrate solely on the text,making it difficult to arouse sufficient reading interest.Therefore,this thesis uses picture books with different image-text ratios in practical teaching to discover the effects on students’ reading interest,thus to develop reading interest and competence.To address these shortcomings,this study attempts to investigate whether picture books with different image-text ratios have different impacts on junior high school students’interest in English reading.Three groups of picture books with different image-text ratios were used and two research questions were addressed:(1)Can English picture books with different image-text ratios affect Junior High School students’ English reading interest?If so,what aspects are affected?(2)What image-text ratio of picture books is more conducive to enhancing students’ English reading interest?According to multimodal theory and previous studies,the image-text ratio will have an impact on students’ reading interest,and their reading interest will influence their reading competence as well.Therefore,the research involves 118 Grade 8 students in one Junior High School in Wuxi to examine whether teaching with picture books with different image-text ratios will affects students’ interest in English reading.All the participants were taught by the same teacher.The pre-test has revealed that no significant difference was found in their English reading interest level.The students are divided into a "picture group":39 students read the picture books with a 70%image-text ratio;an "experiment group":40 students read the picture books with a 50%image-text ratio;a "text group":39 students read the books without the pictures.The teaching experiment is carried out in one term,once a week.Pre-test and post-test of the students’ reading interest levels are collected and analyzed before and after the experiment to study the changes in the reading interest.A questionnaire about reading interest has been designed to explore the changes in students’ reading interest before and after the experiment,which is also supplemented by semi-structured interviews.The results yielded the following major findings:First,most participants have better improvement in English reading interest in all terms of reading time,emotions,love and willingness,and those in the"experiment group" in particular.These students in the"experiment group" made more progress in their competence and awareness of reading the graphic information.Second,using picture books with a 50%image-text ratio will produce a positive influence on junior high school students’ reading interest.Therefore,the selection of English picture books with the right image-text ratio is beneficial to students’ interest in reading in English and the research is a useful attempt to develop junior high school students’English reading interest. |
