INVESTIGATION ON THE CURRENT SITUATION AND COUNTERMEASURES OF EXTRACURRICULAR READING FOR PRIMARY SCHOOL STUDENTS: A CASE STUDY OF ZHEJIANG, CHINA

Abstract

Based on a survey of 697 students in primary schools of Hangzhou, Ningbo, and Jiaxing in Zhejiang Province, this paper found that: (1) 25% of parents support their children to read reference books and regular parent-child reading, but most of the parents are afraid it may negatively influence school curriculum so they limit or against extracurricular reading and do not carry out the parent-child reading; only 27% of teachers often assign extracurricular reading tasks, most rarely or never, parents and schools currently pay little attention to extracurricular reading. (2) Eighty one percent of children spent 2 hours or more on homework or reviewing lessons every day, 88% of them watched about 1 hour of TV every day, and 68% of them played video games for about 1 hour. Except eating, sleeping and commuting, they have an average of 4-5 hours of free time outside school, so more than 50% of primary school students spend less than 0.5 hour reading Chinese books every day. (3) Nearly 80% of children read 2-5 Chinese books every month and spend around ￥500 on books every year; in addition, more than 60% of the respondents read paper books, and the reading of extracurricular English books is close to zero, which caused their limited reading volume, narrow scope of knowledge, restricted international vision, and inadequate reading habits. The situation extracurricular reading is not ideal, which may seriously affect the future academic and career development. To improve the unfavorable situation, this paper put forward the following suggestions: (1) all levels of government should allocate fund to establish and improve bookshelves in school classroom and community library, promote "home - school - community cooperation reading plan", let the children at school can have more 0.5-1 hours of reading at noon, and can approach in the community library for reading on weekend and holidays; (2) distribute free books to low-income families and advocate encouraging parents to spend half an hour reading with their children; (3) the school attaches great importance to the extracurricular reading education, organize pupils in class after school every afternoon 1 hour or so of intensive reading, storytelling and drama class PK activities such as English, both can effectively improve the student's reading interest, also solved the question which is many parents unable to pick up their kids during work at 3:30 p.m.; (4) promote digital reading, reduce the cost of reading, and correctly understand the impact of digital reading on eyesight.

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