Brief Analysis of Chinese Students’ Problems And Possible Solutions in English Reading1.doc

简析中国学生在英语阅读方面的问题和可能的解决方法Brief Analysis of Chinese Students Problems And Possible Solutions in English ReadingContentsAbstract.1Key words.1I. Introduction.2II. The Meaning of Reading.2III. Some Tangible Problems in English Reading31. Bad habits in reading.42. Cross-cultural barriers in English reading.53. Limited vocabulary and grammatical knowledge.74. Shortage of motivation.7IV. Some Possible Solutions of Improving Reading Ability.81. Develop good habits of reading.82. Establish and strengthen the cultural sense.93. Foster the ability to guess the meanings of unfamiliar words.94. Increase the reading speed and keep balance between the reading speed and comprehension.105. Improve reading skills.11V. Conclusion.13References13Brief Analysis of Chinese Students Problems and Possible Solutions in English ReadingAbstract: In recent years, more and more emphasis has been put on the real ability in English learning, so English learners try hard to improve their four integrated skills, especially reading skills. Because reading usually takes up a major part in English teaching. In China, although English teachers and learners spend much time in English teaching and learning, it seems that English learners still have some problems in the comprehension of in the reading materials. The paper firstly analyses the meaning of reading on the basis of the theories of psycholinguistic perspective and communicative approach; and then, it points out some problems for Chinese students in English reading, such as bad habits in reading, cross-cultural barriers in English reading, limited vocabulary and grammatical knowledge, shortage of motivation; At last, it provides some possible solutions to help Chinese students to overcome the obstacles existing English reading and enable them to become effective readers. Key words: reading habits; problems; solutions; reading skills; guess the meaning摘 要：在最近几年中，人们越来越重视英语学习的真实能力，因此英语学习者努力提高他们的四项综合技能，特别是阅读技能。因为阅读通常在英语教学中占据一个重要的部分。在中国，尽管英语教师和英语学者分别在英语教学与英语学习上花费了很长时间，但是英语学习者似乎仍然在英语阅读的理解中存在着一些问题。首先，这篇文章在以心理学观点和交际原理的基础上分析了阅读的含义。然后，指出了一些中国学生在英语阅读上的问题，例如在英语阅读中的不良习惯，跨文化障碍，词汇和语法知识的缺乏，动机的缺乏。最后，为中国学生提出了一些克服英语阅读中障碍的解决方法并使他们成为有效的读者。关键词：阅读习惯；问题；解决方法；阅读技巧；猜词意I. IntroductionWith the development of economy and globalization, English is one of the most important languages in the world. In 2001, China entered the WTO. As China has opened itself to more and more International businesses, Chinese people who have the ability to speak fluent English have a distinct advantage in this new global market. Employment opportunities increase for anybody connected with English-dominated business culture of today. Therefore, more and more people in our country begin to study English. However in learning English, reading plays a very important role. In our daily life, kinds of tests clearly indicate that the reading is very important. People need to develop their reading ability so as to read efficiently and benefit from the wealth of information in the present world. But many people still have some difficulty in understanding the reading passage very well, though they spend much time, energy and money on it.For second language learners, it is essential to read well in a target language. Reading is probably the most important skill in learning a foreign language. And reading in another language allows for one more channel of communication and for an important source of input.English reading has always been considered one of the most important parts of foreign language learning. Without reading, nothing can be done in the development of the competence in listening, speaking, writing and translating. Reading courses, or rather, intensive reading course, fill up a large component of the curricula. Obviously, students and teacher should pay great attention to the importance of reading courses. And what is reading? What obstacles exist in English reading for Chinese students? How can Chinese students achieve proficient reading?II. The Meanings of ReadingAs we know, the psycholinguistic model of EFT is a meaning-based model proposed by Goodman and Smith. Goodman thinks that in the reading process the “reader reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which has been encoded by a writer as a graphic display” (Goodman, 2001). Smith says “···skill in reading actually depends on using the eyes as little as possible, ···as we become fluent readers we learn to rely more on what we already know, on what is behind the eyeballs, and less on the print on the page in front of us”(Smith, 2002). The psycholinguists assume that if the reader has the ability to select the productive language cues, he can decode, through his psycholinguistic processing, the message in the text, and share much of information which the writer intends to convey. The communicative approach of EFL holds that “The primary goal of most foreign language learning is to develop the ability to use real and appropriate language to communicate and interact with others.” (Littlewood, 2003) According to communicative approach, the class is students-centered, and communicative activities are performed between students and the teachers, students and students. But efficient communication still depends on successful decoding of the “meaning” of the discourses, that is, a listener must instantly understand what a speaker wants to express. And communicative efficiency means that students should be able to do efficiently in all of the four skills. Reading competence, which can be considered as a communication between readers and writers, should also be brought into full consideration.There should be something in common with both the psycholinguistic perspective and communicative approach: reading and listening should be regarded as an active psycholinguistic process; a text or discourse is assumed to have its potential meaning; and its real meaning depends on the readers or listeners interaction with the text or discourse. The relationship between a writer and a reader may be represented in this simple following chart: Writer or speaker Text with message or discourse with meaning Reader or listener This chart clearly shows that the purpose of reading is to try to get the meaning of a text as much as possible. According to above chart, we know that a reader does not necessarily achieve what the writer expects. There is much that remains to be explored within the connection between the writer and the reader. What restrict the students ability to understand the passage? III. Some Tangible Problems in English Reading The Chinese language is totally different from the English language. The former belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family and the latter to the Indo-European language family. Therefore, When Chinese learners attempt to understand a text in English, they usually face linguistic problems in various respects: spelling, gender, verb forms, tenses and so on. In addition to these, the essay discusses some other obstacles in English reading, like bad habits in reading, cross-cultural barriers in English reading, limited vocabulary and grammatical knowledge, shortage of motivation.1. Bad habits in readingAmong four integrated skills-Listening, speaking, reading and writing, reading plays a very important role. For professionals, they have to read a lot of reading materials in English. For students, reading comprehension takes up an important part in English test. These phenomena indicate that English learners must have a strong reading ability. For a long period of time, traditional Chinese education is far from regarding students reading method as a certain skill to be taught. Some of them even dont get the training for reading skills at schools or colleges. So the students do not know how to read and they develop the bad habits that greatly hinder their reading efficiency. Therefore, it is very necessary to improve the reading ability. The first step is to find out what bad habits they have when the students are reading.1) Vocalization: Many students have the habit of Vocalization.出声阅读的主要弊病就是使阅读速度和效率受说话速度的限制。 Vocalization is reading words by words. It restricts reading speed and efficiency. Vocalization and silent reading are the different types of reading. The following table will show their differences.VocalizationSilent readingMannerUtterance of every wordsilentSpeedUsually slowUsually fastPurposeUsually to share informationUsually to get informationSkills involvedPronunciation and intonationSkimming, scanning, predictingGuessing unknown wordsUnderstanding relations between sentences and between paragraphsUnderstanding referencesUnderstanding inferencesActivity typeCollective activityIndividual activityWe can see from the above table that Vocalization and silent reading are different in many aspects. Obviously, vocalization can not replace silent reading as it involves only the skills of pronunciation and intonation, while ones real reading ability requires the reading skills of skimming, scanning, predicting, etc. so vocalization restricts reading speed and efficiency. 因为，正常默读速度几乎要比出声朗读的速度快两倍以上。2) Inner speech : It means reading without opening ones mouth, but reading every word of the passage in his mind, and it also hinders the students efficient reading of the passage.3) Reading with finger pointing at each word: This kind of reading habit not only slows down the speed of reading, but also makes readers attention toward the wrong direction. 4) Reading repeatedly Reading repeatedly refers to some students who have just finished reading a sentence or paragraph, then read back again. Of course, this way of reading not only affects students reading speed, but also restricts their full comprehension of the whole passage.5) Swinging head in readingUnconsciously, swinging head around when reading is another bad reading habit. 在阅读过程中，有些人往往尽量使自己的鼻尖对准他正在读的每一个字。In the process of reading, some students tend to make their tips of noses point at the word that they are reading. 这样，当他顺着一行字往下读时，他就会轻微地摆动头部，而当他通过头来看下一行时，他就会很快转回去以便使鼻尖再对准书页的左边。When they are reading the next word, their heads move towards the word; when they are reading another line, they turn back their heads so that their tips of noses point at the word that they are reading all the time. But the students often do not realize that this is an unnecessary action which often impacts on reading speed. 因此，必须克服这种毛病，养成阅读时只移动视线的习惯。Therefore, it is necessary to overcome such bad reading habit and form the habit of only moving the line of vision when reading. 6) Looking up every unknown word When the students read a comprehension text, they often meet unknown words. Sometimes they stop to look up new words in a dictionary. Doing that not only slows down their reading speed, but also makes them forget the information that they have read. In fact, the students can often figure out meanings of new words or expressions without using the dictionary.    其他不良的习惯，诸如阅读时，有的注意力不集中，"思想开小差"；有的用尺子比着， 一行一行地向下移；有的一面阅读一面玩弄钢笔、尺子、钥匙等物，不时地发出响声；有的 爱抖动双腿；有的过多地进行语法分析；有的还停下来2. Cross-cultural barriers in English readingThe cultural knowledge is very important in English reading. Some students fail in English reading because they lack the knowledge of culture. For a long time, in China, the students have just focused on the language forms, such as phonetics, vocabulary and grammar, and ignored the effect of background knowledge of culture. The culture and language cannot be separated. Language is a carrier, which not only carries the information of language, but also carries the information of culture. As the carrier of culture, the cultural background of language is rather extensive. Every kind of language is created and developed in a certain historical circumstance of society. Therefore, language reflects the feature of nation. It not only contains the historical cultural background of this nation, but also the view of life, the way of life and the way of thought of this nation. So Chinese people and English native speakers have different ways of thinking and modes of expression, owing to their respective and unique social practice and geographic environments. In this connection arise the problems in our students comprehension of their English texts: because the students know little about the culture of the target language, they may have some misunderstanding of the reading passage. The Chinese students are often influenced to understand the reading passage by the following differences of culture and expression between Chinese people and English native speakers.1) Negation A relative example is the English way of negation. We often come across the statements which are affirmative in form but negative in content, or negative in form but affirmative in content. “I know better” means” I dont think so”, while” I couldnt feel better” is understood as “Im feeling great”. The following two sentences may also puzzle the Chinese students: You could have come at a better time. I hope youre none the worse for that fall from your horse. To Chinese students, English speaking people have a peculiar way of negation in the above two sentences. Efficient readers can understand the first sentence that means “You have come at a wrong time” and the second one means “I hope you didnt hurt by the fall from your horse.” 2) Ambiguity Ambiguity sometimes arises when Chinese people and English speaking people look at things at different angles. Look at these two sentences: He is green. He was not the eldest son of his father for nothing. Not all students can understand these two sentences, the first sentence means “He is good at planting.” and the second one means “He was a capable eldest son of his father”, 3) IdiomInfluenced by their own idiomatic way of saying things, Chinese students often misunderstand the meaning of English idioms. Look at the following sentences:    All roads lead to Rome. (There are many different ways of doing something.) The early bird catches the worm.  (If you work hard, you will get more.) 4) Non-linguistic information Reading needs both visual and non-visual information. Non-visual information is knowledge that students have already known about the reading text, about the language, and about the world in general. If a studen