Improving Chinese students’ English reading through graded readers

Primary English in China has been in practice since 2001. Despite the success of widespread provision, there have been concerns regarding the quality of students’ learning. To enhance English literacy in schools, a national English reading project chaired by university teacher educators using graded readers was introduced to accompany mandated coursebooks in 2014 initially among a few schools then quickly expanded to thousands. The participating schools were guided to use English graded readers in primary classrooms in collaborative projects with university teacher educators. This paper reports a case study based on a project school in a suburb of Beijing with a cohort of 290 Grade 4 students and their 8 English teachers. The study investigated changes the reading project has brought to the students and teachers between 2017 to 2019. Data collected include three reading test results (pre-, mid-, and post-), and a post-project student questionnaire. Data collected concerning the 8 teachers included classroom observations, teachers’ lesson plans and post project narrative reports. Analyses were closely linked to how students’ literacy developed, including their reading ability, interests, habits, and creative thinking. Changes in the teachers’ views and their teaching practices were also examined.