Foreign Language Reading Enjoyment:Insights From Hainan Senior High School Students

Reading is an important channel for students to acquire foreign language knowledge.The New English Curriculum Standard for Senior High School Students(2017 edition,revised in 2020)specifies the amount of extracurricular reading that senior high school students are required to achieve at different stages.To achieve this goal,we must cultivate students’ positive reading emotions and this requires academia to carry out research on these positive reading emotions.In recent years,scholars at home and abroad have explored foreign language reading enjoyment,which makes us have a certain understanding of the nature of foreign language reading enjoyment and its relationship with reading achievement,reading ability,self-efficacy and reading motivation.In spite of this,there are still many limitations in the studies of previous foreign language reading enjoyment,especially in the Hainan research context.Therefore,on the basis of reviewing previous studies,the author conducted a survey on 1695 students from three senior high schools in Hainan Province,so as to understand the representations,the level,and the influencing factors of English reading enjoyment of Hainan senior high school students,in the hope that the research results will be helpful to enhance Hainan senior high school students’ positive emotions and abilities in English reading.The research questions of this paper include: 1)What are the representations of English reading enjoyment among Hainan senior high school students? 2)What is the general level of English reading enjoyment among Hainan senior high school students?3)What are the underlying factors of Hainan senior high school students’ English reading enjoyment based on quantitative analysis? 4)What are the underlying factors of Hainan senior high school students’ English reading enjoyment based on qualitative analysis?Data analysis showed that:(1)Hainan senior high school students’ English reading enjoyment was represented by happiness,satisfaction,excitement,relaxation,interest,sense of achievement,immersion,active thinking,smile,and reading motivation;(2)Hainan senior high school students’ English reading enjoyment was at a medium level;(3)Boys’ English reading enjoyment was slightly higher than girls’,but there was no significant difference between them.There was a significant difference in English reading enjoyment between Senior one and Senior three,with Senior three being significantly higher than Senior one.No significant difference was found in the English reading enjoyment level between three different schools.Among all the age groups(15-18 years old),significant differences were found only between participants aged at 16 and 17 years.Among all the English learning duration groups(6-14 years),students who had studied English for 8,10,12 and 14 years had significantly higher English reading enjoyment than those who had studied English for 6 and 7 years.The English reading enjoyment level of those who had studied English for 10 years was significantly higher than that for 9 years.(4)Hainan senior high school students’ English reading enjoyment was influenced by the following factors:(a)Understanding of reading materials,(b)Linguistic and cultural barrier,(c)Usefulness of English,(d)Interesting of reading materials,(e)positive emotions after reading,(f)Interest in English,(g)Voluntariness of reading tasks,(h)Test performance,(i)The difficulty level of reading materials,(j)Level of English proficiency,(k)(Un)timed reading,(l)Teacher-centered variables,(m)In-reading psychological states,and(n)Genres of reading materials.Based on the above research results,the author puts forward suggestions from teachers,students and parents in order to improve students’ English reading enjoyment levels.