Reading Strategies and Students’ Reading Competence in Senior School.doc

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1、中学生阅读策略以及阅读能力Reading Strategies and Students Reading Competence in Senior SchoolAbstract: Reading comprehension ability is one of the key abilities trained in senior school English teaching. English reading is an important part of English teaching. Meanwhile, it is also a difficult part for students

2、 to improve. To improve reading ability, the students should grasp basic reading strategy, that is, in the reading process students have the ability to read materials accurately and fluently. However, the present situation of English reading in senior school is not optimistic and many students readi

3、ng efficiency is low. This has drawn attention of many linguists and researchers working in this filed. Based a theory study, this paper has made a brief study on senior students English reading ability. It focuses largely on reading strategies. Illustrate the necessity of reading strategies so that

4、 the concrete approaches can be determined.Key words: English reading in senior high School; reading strategies; reading ability 摘 要：阅读理解能力是中学英语教学能力训练的一个关键点，英语阅读教学是英语教学的一个重要方面，同时也是学生难以提高的一个方面，要想提高阅读能力，首先要掌握基本的阅读技巧，即指阅读过程中运用的各种方法和手段，准确而流利地阅读各种语言材料的能力。然而目前高中英语阅读的情况不容乐观而且许多学生的阅读效率很低，这个问题已引起了许多语言学家和中学英语

5、教师的普遍关注。本文在理论分析的基础上，对中学英语阅读过程中出现的问题进行了初步的分析，并以阅读策略为切入点，阐述了实行阅读策略的必要性和具体对策。关 键 词：高中英语阅读；阅读策略；阅读能力ContentsI. Introduction 1II. Literature Review 1A. Research on learning strategies 1B. Research on reading strategies 2III. Existing Problems and Factors Effecting English Reading 3A. Existing problems in

6、 English reading 31. Lacking of independence in the reading process 32. Misunderstanding of difficult words 33. Lacking of Vocabulary 44. Ignoring the guidance of reading skills 4 5. Ignoring teaching methods 4B. Factors affecting English reading 5 1. Emotional factors of the students 52. Related cu

7、ltural background knowledge 53. Reading interest 5 4. Characteristics of students 6 IV. Strategies and Suggestions on English reading 6A. Strategies on English reading 61. Methods 62. Principles 73. Making notes 8 B. Suggestions on English reading 91. Fostering the English reading habits 9 2. Traini

8、ng the students planning for English reading 103. Paying attention to the accumulation of vocabulary 124. Attaching importance to cultural background knowledge 125. Feedback after reading 13V. Conclusion 13Works Cited 14I. IntroductionAs is commonly accepted, reading is vital to acquiring knowledge.

9、 Reading is one of the four important skills in English as a second or foreign language. It is also a skill that the students need to possess to support independent and self-directed learning. With the Information Ages arrival, the English materials gradually change from paper materials to electroni

10、c ones. So, it becomes more and more important for senior students to speed up their reading in order to acquire as much information as possible. Thus, fostering a good English reading habit is essential for students. And being able to adopt different reading skills for different reading materials a

11、nd purposes will also help the students read more effectively for the students in senior school. The requirement of fostering students reading competence is highlighted in senior schools English teaching. Reading is one of the important links in learning of a foreign language. It gives learners impo

12、rtant and sufficient materials for language input, while the present situation of English reading teaching is not optimistic and many students reading efficiency is low, therefore it is an urgent task for English teachers to master some strategies in order to improve the students reading ability.II.

13、 Literature Review A. Research on learning strategiesResearch into language learning strategies began in the 1960s, since when a considerable amount of descriptive work has been carried out in this area. Much of this has clearly been influenced by developments in cognitive psychology For a practical

14、 application at classroom level and a selection of activities for teaching strategies to students, the reader is referred to Ellis and Sinclair book, Learning to Learn English (Hu Yining 210).It has already been suggested that learning a language is difficult in many ways from learning most other su

15、bjects because of its social and communicative nature. Learning a language involves communicating with other people and therefore requires not only suitable cognitive skills but also certain social and communicative skills. It is not surprising, therefore, to find in the literature on language learn

16、ing strategies that further categories are identified. Joan Rubin, who pioneered much of the work in this field, makes the useful distinction between strategies that contribute directly to learning. Thus, operations concerned with memorizing, inducing rules, guessing meaning and rehearsal contribute

17、 directly to the learning of language at a cognitive level; they are the mental processes by which learners acquire knowledge of the language system. However, there is another group of processes that we employ to help us to learn a foreign language more efficiently in an indirect way by bringing us

18、into closer contact with the target language. This serves to give us more input of the language, or an increased opportunity to try out the language with other people. Seeking opportunities to speak to tourists, listening to the radio or writing to a pen-friend would be examples of indirect strategi

19、es (Davies 210).Rubin suggests that there are three major types of strategies used by learners which can contribute directly or indirectly to language learning. She identifies six main cognitive strategies contributing directly to language learning.1. Clarification refers to strategies used by learn

20、ers to check whether their understanding of a rule or language item is correct.2. Guessing refers to various strategies concerned with making hypotheses about how the language works. In order to make subject hypotheses, learners need to be able to select appropriate information, attend to what is im

21、portant, and hold a number of pieces of information in the head. 3. Deductive reasoning is a strategy where the learner uses knowledge of general rules to produce or understand language. 4. Practice is concerned with storage and retrieval of language.5. Memorization is also concerned with storage an

22、d retrieval of information, and ways of organizing the information for storage. 6. Monitoring refers to learners checking of their own performance; including noticing errors and observing how a message is received (Guyotte 211).B. Research on reading strategiesOne interesting line of research in the

23、 second language area concerns the effect on reading performance of readers own internalized models or beliefs about the reading process. Key questions here are: How do second language readers conceive of the reading process? How do these internalized models affect their reading performance? Devine

24、carried out a study with 20 low-intermediate ESL reading from a variety of backgrounds. The subjects were interviewed to determine their attitudes toward reading, and their ideas on what constitutes “good” reading. Based on their answers, Devine classified the subject according to whether they were

25、sound-, word-, or meaning-centered in their approach to reading. What they took away with them from the reading process.Evaluations of unaided retellings of the reading selections also suggested that the internalized models of reading held by the subjects affected recall and comprehension. Those rea

26、ders who in their interviews indicated that they considered understanding what the author wanted to say as the measure of successful reading (that is, meaning-centered readers) not surprisingly demonstrated well to excellent recall and comprehension of the text. On the other hand, and, again not sur

27、prisingly, readers who equated good reading with sound identification or good pronunciation usually failed to understand or recall what they had read (Devine 149).There are following strategies for students in reading:1. To obtain information for some purpose or out of curiosity about some topic;2.

28、To know when or where something will take place or is available;3. To know what is happening or happened (as reported in newspapers, magazines, reports);4. To keep in touch with friends by correspondence or to understand business letters;III. Existing Problems and Factors Effecting English Reading A

29、. Existing problems in English reading Although, the teaching of reading is always taken seriously, there exist problems. English reading teaching in senior school is still confined by examination-oriented education system. As the most important part in each unit, texts should act as a major role, w

30、hich is not only used for reading material but used for listening, speaking and writing. Therefore the methods of teaching texts should be put on an outstanding place. However, the methods that mangy teachers deal with the texts are usually over-simplified. Traditionally, English teachers often only

31、 focus on language itself in teaching words, phrases, pronunciation and grammar, neglecting the whole structure of the texts and the real information that language itself conveys. On the other hand, many teachers do not fully utilize the texts to cultivate students language abilities and habits of r

32、eading. The problem highlights the fact that many English teachers have a lot of arbitrariness in teaching texts, rather than pay more attention to the effective strategies and skills of text teaching and reading.1. Lacking of independence in the reading process The reading course is still delivered

33、 in the teacher-centered method. Teachers teach knowledge and students learn it, teachers ask questions and students answer them. The teaching process is like this: passage-grammar-translation-exercises. This teaching method forces the students to a passive reading situation, doing no help to improv

34、e the students learning initiatives and also do harm to cultivate the students abilities of finding problems and solving them. Thus it can not form an interactive cooperative teaching atmosphere among teachers and students. Students enthusiasm and initiatives are depressed. At last, the effect of En

35、glish reading teaching will be affected. 2. Misunderstanding of difficult words How to deal with new words and difficult words that encountered in the text is a difficult task for English teachers. Some teachers only emphasize on the entire understanding of the whole passage, but ignore the role voc

36、abulary plays in the English reading. Some teachers just give the conceptual meaning of the words and neglect the specific meaning in the context. Vocabulary is the basic unit of context and it must rely on the context in order to produce specific meaning. Sometimes, the misunderstanding of one word

37、 or a phrase can lead to the deviation of the understanding of a paragraph, even the whole passage. 3. Lacking of Vocabulary The linguist David Wilkins (1972) once summed up the importance of vocabulary in his book Linguistics and Language Teaching: Without grammar very little can be conveyed, witho

38、ut vocabulary nothing can be conveyed. Vocabulary, the building material, is essential to a language. It is one of the three basic components (pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar), and is of utmost importance to peoples reading and communication. Lacking of vocabulary is the basic reason of restra

39、ining the improvement of the students reading ability.4. Ignoring the guidance of reading skills In the past, English teachers ignored the guidance of reading skills. Regularly, the English teachers adopted old traditional method: reading new wordteaching grammardoing exercises. As a result, the tea

40、chers spent much time teaching the language points instead o training the students ability of using language. Teachers in senior school focus on the knowledge too much, but ignore the guidance of reading skills. What the English teachers should do is not just like this. They should help students und

41、erstand the reading material correctly as well as train the students reading techniques. Conscious development of training students reading skills is important, because we are trying to equip students for the future. It is impossible to familiarize them within every text they will want to read. But

42、what the English teachers can do is giving them techniques of reading. That is to say the teachers duty is not teach students what to read but tell them how to read. Therefore, it is necessary and accessible that strategies and skills of reading comprehension in the English textbook should be put on

43、 an outstanding place.5. Ignoring teaching methodsBut now the reform of English teaching has made the teaching objectives more scientific, more perfect, and more systematic: it emphasizes that different kinds of teaching material should be carried out by using different strategies and ways. The stud

44、y of types of lessons and teaching models will make the teachers change the old, simple, traditional ones step by step. The teachers should make full use of teaching aids, and try to adopt some new teaching methods to arouse the students interest and improve their reading skills through many differe

45、nt kinds of classroom activities, they will make the students participants instead of listeners. Training students to employ different and effective reading strategies in three steps of reading can greatly enhance their reading skills. And it will open another window for students to acquaint themselves with the outer world, both for survival, getting more information and entertainment or pleasure.B. Factors affecting English reading 1. Emotional factors of the studentsSenior school students are a special group. On one han