The Effects Of Different Types Of Narrow Reading On Senior High School Students’ English Reading Learning

As one of the ways to achieve the goal of English proficiency,reading is of great significance.With the proposal of English reading literacy,much attention has been focused on English reading learning.Distinguished from generic reading(GR),narrow reading(NR)refers to reading a large number of passages on the same topic,in the same genre or by the same author within a period of time.However,past researches on NR have focused more on first language learners rather than second language learners and most foreign researchers tend to use series of works by the same author as reading materials.While the selection of reading materials at home pays more attention to discourses under the same topic.Therefore,based on input hypothesis theory,relevance theory and schema theory,this thesis combines researches at home and abroad and proposes three research questions:(1)Effects of different types of NR on senior high school students’ reading ability.(2)Effects of different types of NR on senior high school students’ reading interest.(3)Views of senior high school students on using NR in English reading learning.In this research,94 students in two parallel classes of the second grade in a senior high school in Z City are chosen as the participants.According to their final English test results in the first semester,there exists no significant difference in their English competence.Therefore,one is chosen as topic-limited narrow reading(T-NR)group and the other is chosen as author-limited narrow reading(A-NR)group,each consisting of 47 students.The entire experiment lasts about three months.The researcher conducts the pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire to figure out current situation and the changes of students’ English reading interest.The two reading comprehension tests are designed to provide more objective evidence for the effects of the two types of NR.After the experiment,the researcher randomly selected 3students of different levels in the two groups to conduct interviews,aiming to explore their views on the use of NR in reading learning after the experiment.All collected data are analyzed by SPSS 26.0.After the analysis and discussion,this research draws the following conclusions:(1)Both types of NR can improve students’ reading ability.Compared with A-NR,T-NR is more effective in improving students’ word guessing ability.(2)Both types of NR can increase students’ reading interest.T-NR is better at enhancing the relevance between reading and learners,while A-NR gains more satisfaction among the students.(3)Both groups of students have a positive attitude towards NR,and they believe that the application of NR can effectively improve their reading ability and interest.This research holds that NR is an effective way for high school students to read,and draws the following implications:(1)English learners can use NR as an auxiliary choice for reading.(2)Teachers can actively apply different types of NR to cultivate students’ reading ability and stimulate their reading interest.(3)Textbook compilers can consider the impact of NR when compiling the reading passages in textbooks.Although there are still some limitations,it is still hoped that this research can provide a possible way for English reading learning in senior high school,and enrich the researches on the application of NR.