A Study On The Effects Of Narrow Reading On Senior High School Students’ English Reading Literacy

Reading literacy is one of the critical signs to measure the quality of a country’s citizens.English reading literacy,which includes English reading ability and reading character,is one of the representations of language proficiency in the core competences of the English subject.The current domestic English reading teaching problems are limited classroom reading time,insufficient reading materials,and fragmented knowledge.According to scholars,the narrow reading theory proposed by Krashen is an effective solution to the current reading dilemma.However,the empirical research on applying the narrow reading mode to develop high school students’ English reading literacy has not received enough attention.Therefore,this study attempts to use the narrow reading mode for high school English reading instruction to develop students’ reading literacy.Based on the English reading literacy framework proposed by Wang and Chen and guided by schema theory,input hypothesis,and relevance theory,this study explored the effects of narrow reading on high school students’ English reading literacy,focusing on two aspects: English reading comprehension ability and English reading character.Two research questions are addressed here:(1)What effect does narrow reading have on senior high school students’ English reading comprehension ability?(2)What effect does narrow reading have on senior high school students’ English reading character? Two parallel classes in a high school in Sichuan Province were selected as EC and CC to participate in this study.The entire experiment lasted about 14 weeks.Narrow reading mode was adopted to implement English reading instruction in EC,while a traditional reading teaching mode was adopted in CC.Through reading comprehension tests,reading character questionnaires and interviews,students’ English reading comprehension and English reading character were assessed before and after the teaching experiment,and the results were compared and analyzed to test the effects of the narrow reading mode on high school students’ English reading literacy.The results of the study shows that:(1)The application of narrow reading can improve high school students’ English reading comprehension ability.(2)The application of narrow reading teaching is beneficial to the development of high school students’ English reading character.Therefore,in English reading teaching,teachers can reasonably apply narrow reading mode according to the teaching environment and students’ learning characteristics.The representativeness of the experimental results still needs to be verified due to the short trial period and small sample size.Future studies should investigate how to combine narrow reading mode with conventional reading instruction as well as in-class narrow reading and after-class narrow reading.