Abstract and Key Words

Abstract: Narrow Reading, firstly proposed by Krashen early in 1981, is a reading strategy recommending reading articles or books on the same topic, by the same author, or in the same genre. This paper aims to summarize the functions of Narrow Reading, find out the inspiration of it for middle school English reading teaching through the analysis of previous researches and relevant reading theories. Instead of only focusing on the essence of narrow reading, the author also conducted an experiment in middle school in order to explore whether Narrow Reading is an effective way for middle school English reading teaching, whether it can help students acquire basic related vocabulary, accumulate relevant knowledge, and cultivate good reading habits for students.

Key words: Narrow Reading; English reading; theoretical analysis; empirical experiment

摘要：窄式阅读是Krashen于1981年提出的一个阅读模式概念，是指学习者通过阅读同一风格，同一主题或者某位作家的多部作品来提高阅读能力的一种策略。本文通过分析学者对窄式阅读的早期研究和相关的理论基础，旨在全面总结出窄式阅读对阅读教学的作用，发现窄式阅读对中学英语阅读教学的启示。除了关注窄式阅读的理论研究，作者还在中学开展了实证研究，目的在于探究窄式阅读是否是一个有效的阅读方式，它是否可以帮助学生掌握相关的词汇，积累有关背景知识，甚至于帮助学生养成良好的阅读习惯。

关键词：窄式阅读；英语阅读；理论分析；实证研究

1. Introduction
As an international language, English is becoming more and more important and popular in our life. Therefore, people begin to pay more attention to learning English. As an important tool of getting information about the whole world, reading has gained a high status in English learning. However, most learners found that although they spent a lot of time and energy in learning English, they still couldn’t make great progress in their reading ability. Some students even fail to understand an English passage when they come across in daily life. In fact, if they mater some useful methods and use them correctly, they will become effective English readers.
“Narrow Reading, firstly proposed by Krashen early in 1981, is a reading strategy which advocates reading on the same topics, books by the same author, and/or in the same genre. In other words, it means to read articles under the same topic or in the same genre extensively. It is supposed that students’ reading comprehension and interest would be improved as their accumulation of background knowledge being enlarged”. Narrow Reading is a new theory in English teaching, which will bring new enlightenment to English reading teaching.