Hence the topic of the reading material does matter。 The first and foremost characteristic that needs to be highlighted here is that the material should be interesting, meaningful, linguistically appropriate and cognitively challenging, which gives students maximum opportunities to do it。 Additionally, the material length chosen should be in accordance to their reading habit and not exceed the maximum of their memory length。

Many researchers have found that the topic interest could do great facilitation in both passage comprehension and retelling。 While others hold that the interest may distract students’ concentration which would probably lead to the result that students may easily go beyond the passage itself and even only their own imagination are left finally。 So in this research, we are trying to compare the effectiveness of two different degrees of interest (high topic interest and low topic interest) in helping students’ performance of passage retelling。

1。1 The relationship between interest and students

Interests refer to relations between inpiduals and objects, domains, events, or topics that are personally meaningful, which is both a psychological state and an inpidual predisposition。 Besides interest is not inherited but an acquired characteristic, which is generated in the process of laboring, learning, games or social activities。   

Interest is at once a cognitive state and an affective state, what Silvia calls a “knowledge emotion。” The feelings that characterize interest are overwhelmingly positive: a sense of being energized and invigorated, captivated and enthralled。 As for its effects on cognition: interest effectively turbocharges our thinking。 When we’re interested in what we’re learning, we pay closer attention; we process the information more efficiently; we employ more effective learning strategies, such as engaging in critical thinking, making connections between old and new knowledge, and attending to deep structure instead of surface features。 When we’re interested in a task, we work harder and persist longer, bringing more of our self-regulatory skills into play。

Interests powerfully influence our academic and professional choices。 A seven-year-long study by Judith Harackiewicz of the University of Wisconsin and her colleagues found that college students’ interest in an introductory psychology course taken their freshman year predicted how likely they were to enroll in additional psychology classes and to major in the subject。 Interest predicted such outcomes even more accurately than students’ grades in that initial course。 In general, writes Harackiewicz, “research has found that interest is a more powerful predictor of future choices than prior achievement。”论文网

Also, scientists have shown that passionate interests can even allow people to overcome academic difficulties or perceptual disabilities。 One study found that students who scored poorly on achievement tests but had well-developed interests in reading or mathematics were more likely to engage with the meaning of textual passages or math problems than those with high scores but no such interests。 Another study, of prominent academics and Nobel Laureates who struggled with dyslexia, found that they were able to persist in their efforts to read because they were motivated to explore an early and ardent interest。

Many researchers suggested that interests may emerge in early childhood。 Parent reports confirm that interest in domains motivates students to pursue domain-relevant information through books (typically read to them by others), digital media, videotapes, and toy models that support learning。 

In the book, namely the Psychology of Primary School Students, it is mentioned in the chapter the Interest of Primary School Students that the interest of primary school students are mainly manifested in the learning activities while that of preschool students are more associated with games, which indicates the significance of the demanding job that is selecting a suitable topic。 Furthermore, what is stressed in this chapter is that the interest of them alters to focus on tales which are kind of science fiction and they themselves are full of imagination or get interested in fantasy things。 Hence the implication here is that the better selection of reading material for primary school students should be excerpted from science fictions which contain heroic deeds or adventures and the like。