Action Research on After-class Collaborative Extensive Reading

1. Action Research on After-class Collaborative Extensive Reading 河北师范大学 姜东霞 jiangdongxia71@163.com

2. Introduction • Theoretical analysis • Research and findings • Conclusion

3. Introduction • Topic of the research: to investigate the effects of after-class collaborative extensive reading on tertiary non-English majors’ reading ability development and general English proficiency level • Results: there may be a more natural and independent way of after-class English learning activities than we are normally engaged in.

4. Language leaning is a very complex process of cognitive development. • Reading has taken the bulk of the teaching time as a major means of language learning and teaching in China, an EFL environment.

5. Before 1960s, reading was once regarded as a process of decoding activities: word-recognition and syntax-analysis • Now: theory of Interactive Reading and Schema Theory : both the pre-stored background information that is brought to reading texts by the reader and the information that is contained in texts are very important

6. Effects of both test-driven learning and the long-established learning and teaching habits of taking reading as a means of language learning exposure : • Misconception: reading is a decoding process: word-recognition and syntax- analysis ---long-mentioned “woods and trees phenomenon

7. Problems: after reading, readers have understood much of the detail but have simply missed the “point” • some students’ little pleasure but anxiety and demotivation in reading • Students often spend much time, but with low effectiveness; and depend too much on the teacher, but with little independent planning and monitoring of the learning process

8. Theoretical Analysis • Extensive reading • Extensive reading and autonomous learning • Collaboration

9. Extensive reading • Reasons for unsatisfactory improvement of reading ability: • insufficient vocabulary; • lack of necessary strategy to determine the sense of unknown words; • inability to understand the sense of long and complex sentences; • low reading speed; • lack of background knowledge critical to the comprehension of the reading materials

10. primary cause: insufficient reading practice/ insufficient input of new reading materials • Suggestion: extensive reading practice

11. Extensive reading: an approach to the teaching and learning of second language reading in which learners read large quantities of books and often materials that are well within their linguistic competence ---Day & Bamford • Similar to the L1 pleasure reading but for pedagogical purposes --- Aebesold &Field

12. Most striking effect: to make fluent readers : • --a large sight vocabulary • --world and topical knowledge • --positive attitude and thus motivation to reading --increased general linguistic competence in readers --automatizing syntactic processing

13. Extensive reading and autonomous learning • Extensive reading program is in conformity with the ultimate objective of students’ autonomous learning. • Both aiming at students’ independent performance through collaboration • In reading, students should perform individualized autonomous activities that correspond to their own leaning styles and learning aims

14. central features of autonomous learning: • activeness • effectiveness • relative independence

15. Extensive reading can be used to promote autonomous learning: • no unified sense or unified answer to any reading text or problem • extensive reading is performed mainly after class, without unified requirement • no occupation of students’ mental space is made by the teacher with instruction or imposed questions • reading with their own methods

16. Extensive reading program can offer the cooperative opportunities to help students learn autonomously: • Contact, discussion, and collaboration, which are dispensable factors in extensive reading, are very important in developing students’ autonomous ability.

17. Collaboration • Collaborative learning can play a critical role in the comprehension of related material and the active construction of related meaning. • Collaborative group learning has been shown to be effective in increasing academic achievement and learning motivation when used properly. • Collaborative learning also allows group members to formulate and appraise information from new and different perspectives

18. Collaborative group learning has been shown to be effective in increasing academic achievement and learning motivation when used properly

19. Research and findings • The research questions are: • Is after-class cooperative extensive reading effective for developing my students’ reading skills? • Does the after-class cooperative extensive reading increase my students’ general English language proficiency?

20. Size of subjects: 160 EFL Chinese non-English major sophomores in two classes

21. Data Collection Methods: • Reading ability: TOEFL institutional reading test items • General language proficiency: The scores of CET (College English Test) Band four

22. Students: divided into groups of generally 4 to 5 members • A minimal requirement of 3 hours’ extensive reading per week was made clear. • Duration: one semester

23. Reading ability test: The mean value obtained for the experiment class is 69.1 while that for the control class is 67.3. • T value: 2.34. • P value (significance): .022.

24. There are more than 55% of students getting marks of 70 and plus for the reading ability test, while only 33% of students getting those marks. • Most frequently obtained marks for the experiment class: 71 and 73, both being 10% in frequency; • while for the control class, the marks most frequently obtained: 67 and 68, 9%, both being 9% in frequency.

25. General language proficiency test: The mean value obtained for the experiment class is 67 while that for the control class is 64.2. • T value : 2.04. • P : .044.

26. More than 38% of students getting marks of 70 and plus in the experiment class, while only 18% of students getting those marks in the control class. • The most frequently obtained marks for the experiment class are 68 and 69, both being 9% in frequency; while for the control class, the marks most frequently obtained are 66 and 62, being 10% and 9% respectively in frequency.

27. Tentative answer to the research questions: • such extensive reading program might make some significant difference in specially my students. • With more collaborated pleasure reading in English after class, they might achieve a higher proficiency level besides a better reading ability.

28. Potential problems of the experiment • -Possible biased difference in reading time between the two classes • -weekly reports written by the experiment class members may lead to better writing skill • - no pre-tests

29. Conclusion • It is suggested that students adopt a more natural and pleasant means as a supplement to the set English teaching curriculum to help them reach their L2 learning objectives.

30. Thank you !