How to Improve English Reading Ability1.doc

怎样提高英语阅读能力how to improve english reading abilitycontentsabstract.1key words.1i. introduction.2ii. current conditions and problems.2iii. strategies of reading skills.31. deal with the unfamiliar words.31) use the dictionary with discretion.3 2) guessing the meaning of new words43) using the word-formation to surmise the meaning of the new words.4 4) using parts of speech between paragraphs to guess the meaning of new words.42. the skimming skill.53. the scanning skill.5iv. enriching and enlarging the background knowledge.6v. master the correct methods of thinking.8 1. prediction.8 2. inference.9 3. use grammar and rhetoric knowledge.10vi. eradicate bad habits and form good ones.10vii. improve reading speed.12viii. conclusion.13references.13how to improve english reading abilityhow to improve english reading abilityabstract: reading ability is very important in our daily life and study. as we know, reading ability refers to the reading skills that a reader applies. it is a basic skill for chinese students including foreign language learners. reading ability generates learning interest that helps students know themselves and others better as well. it is necessary to improve their reading abilities. so the first thing we meet when we are reading is the vocabulary, that is, how to deal with the unfamiliar words will be a very important aspect in our considered process. next, we must enrich and enlarge the background knowledge to solve the problems in the article. we have experiences of reading something which does not contain any new words or new structures, but we still find it difficult to understand, the reason is that we lack knowledge about the culture of west nations. finally, we must eradicate bad habits and form good ones. only this can we go further on critical reading with a higher speed. key words: vocabulary; background knowledge; habit of reading摘 要：阅读能力在我们的日常生活和学习中都是十分重要的。正如我们所知道的，阅读能力是阅读者将阅读技巧运用到文章中。对于中国学生包括外语学习者来说这是十分基本的技巧。阅读能力产生阅读兴趣帮助学生更好的理解自己以及他人。提高他们的阅读能力是十分必要的。首先当我们阅读时遇到的第一个问题就是词汇，那就是说，在我们的思考过程中怎样处理不熟悉的词汇是十分重要的。接着，我们必须丰富扩大背景知识去解决文章中的问题。大家都有这样的经历，当读一些东西时，并没有任何生词和不熟悉的结构，但是我们仍然觉得很难理解，原因就是我们缺乏关于西方国家文化的知识。最后，我们必须根除阅读过程中存在的坏习惯形成好习惯。只有完成这些我们以较高的速度能在紧要关头的阅读上更进一步。关键词：词汇；背景知识；阅读习惯i. introductionreading is one of the important skills in english learning. its purpose is to enlarge their vocabulary and familiarize themselves with background knowledge about english and to cultivate students careful observation and their logic thinking. what is more, it is to improve students comprehension. the importance of reading ability include two parts: first, reading ability generates learning power that helps you know yourself and others better. it also helps you to understand past, present and future more clearly. second, reading ability activates learning power. for most students, they use english reading in a way that they may obtain more advanced information concerning their own talent, and then they may put the newly learnt knowledge into practice. english reading is an important tool for people to obtain information; it is also a convenient way to exchange ideas. english reading is a kind of communication, and for most people in most situations it is more important than speaking. especially in the situation of todays growing internationalization and globalization, through effective english reading to get the useful, up-to-date, and the worldwide information and knowledge has the decisive role for a student. and english reading has an extremely important position and proportion scores in any kind of english test. so, the importance of english reading is self-evident, and sometimes it may determine the cause of a persons success or failure, happy life or not, and learning progress or not.ii. current conditions and problemsfor a long time, many english teachers have always attached importance to training the students english reading ability, but the most teachers in reading teaching have limited to the purpose of examination, and could not improve the ability of students to obtain information from reading teaching, even didnt pay attention to the students reading habits and interest. many teachers often use examination of intensive training mode in reading teaching, causing students in a passive state for a long time. all of these reasons lead to students to have to face the following problems: first, single reading materials. students have only textbooks, test paper and review material. these materials have the single form, the similar content, which cant stimulate students interest in reading, and couldnt improve students reading ability. second, simple training methods. the way often used is to answer the reading comprehension questions. teachers ask all of students to read the same reading material, and then choose the best answers from four choices. throughout the train process, students are always in passive reading state, they lost their thinking space and thinking power. third, imbalance of learning focus. todays textbooks are in the many styles, but in the actual teaching, many teachers still divide the reading material into some isolated language points, which weaken the english reading material functions. the result is that students attach importance to grammar, and neglect the train of english reading skill. in this paper, i will focus on how to improve english reading ability.iii. strategies of reading skills1. deal with the unfamiliar words as the term suggests, unfamiliar word is vocabulary that we dont know the meaning. if you could deal well with the unfamiliar words in english reading, youll get the main idea about the article. but if you could not dispose of the new words, youll meet some difficulties in understanding. many students probably consider that their main problem in reading is not having big enough vocabulary. it has been suggested that the vocabulary about five thousand words is needed to start independent reading. besides it, i sum up some reading methods through my experience, as following:1) use the dictionary with discretionstudents who meet a new word they cannot interpret are first likely to ask what is meaning, most of the students turn to dictionaries. this is very natural and in some circumstances advisable. but in fact, one of the first things to be said about a dictionary is “dont use it too often”. students who keep looking up new words dont read that effectively. every time you break off to consult a dictionary, you slow down your reading and interrupt your thinking, which should be following the development of thought in the text like many useful tools, they can be dangerous.we must free ourselves from dependence on a dictionary. it is essential to realize that we should do well without dictionary, and that it is wasteful to look up every new word, but many students reading for a serious study purpose need to look up new words. for them, they must learn to use a dictionary effectively and with discretion. the first step towards using the dictionary as a tool instead of a crutch is to decide which word needs to look up, and to accept that they should be used as few as possible. having decided to look up a word, we want to do it quickly and to make the best use of the information in the dictionary. of course both skills need training. students need to be familiar with the kind of information offered by their own. practice is needed in selecting from several meanings offered, the one that is relevant to the given text. 2) guessing the meaning of new words “reading was a psycholinguistic guessing game.”(goodman, 1967:108) the learners can use the word-formation strategies to guess the new word meaning. we can also guess the meaning from the context, etc. students should be encouraged to make a guess at the meaning of the words they do not know rather than look them up in a dictionary. this is very important to develop the reading skills. for example, “frogs and other animals are known as amphibians because they have double life. they are at-home on land and in the water.” if you dont know the word “amphibian”, you can guess the meaning of the word from “double life” and “on land and in the water”. look at the following sentence: “after a day of hunting without having anything to eat, jack must have been ravenous.” can you guess the meaning of “ravenous”?3) using the word-formation to surmise the meaning of the new wordsas we know, lots of word formations have fixed patterns. such as: prefix, suffix derivative, compound and so on. like the root of “log” (speech, speak). a lot of words are created by “log”, such as “dialogue, prologue, monologue, etc.” if you know the prefix “dia (between), pro (before), mono (lonely).” you can understand their meanings. lets analyze the word “philanthropist”, the prefix is “phi (love), anthro (man), ist (person)”, can you guess the meaning of word? another example: “ant, anti (against)”. “antagonist”, who is against or contends with another in a struggle fight or contest opponent of the principal character in a play movie or story. “japan was our antagonist in world war ”.4) using parts of speech between paragraphs to guess the meaning of new words. the first one is synonym. synonym-word or phrase with same meaning as another in the same language though perhaps with a different style grammar or technical ones. for example:” the directors are so pleased with the progress of the business that they plan to expand, enlarge the factory.” we can know the words “expand” and “enlarge” have the same meaning.the second is antonym. antonyms are multiple words having the different meanings. for example:” like the other mountain boys, dee was taciturn. but he became talkative when i mentioned the fish king solomon to him.” if you dont know the mew word “taciturn”, you can guess the meaning from “but” and “talkative”.the third one is hyponymy. hyponymy-one other kind of sense relation between sords. hyponymy is the relationship, which obtains between specific and general lexical items, such that the former is included in the latter. for example:” a cat is a hyponymy of animal, flute of instrument chair of furniture and so on.” these specific words not only add much force and clarity but also evoke vivid picture in the readers mind. for example:” she likes red color, so today she is in crimson.” if the word “crimson” is a new one to you, you may guess the meaning of it through “red color”.2. the skimming skillskimming refers to the process of reading only main ideas within a passage to get an overall impression of the content of a reading. skimming is done at a speed three to four times faster than normal reading. people often skim when they have lots of material to read in a limited amount of time. there are many strategic that can be used when skimming. some people read the first and last paragraphs using heading and summarize as they move down the page. you might read as following: a. read the title. b. read the introduction or the first paragraph. c. read the first sentence of every other paragraph. d. read the headings and subheadings. e. notice any pictures, charts or graphs. f. notice any italicized or boldface words or phrases. g. read the summary or last paragraph.3. the scanning skillscanning is a technique you often use when looking up a word in a telephone book or dictionary. you search for key words or ideas. in most cases, you know what youre looking for, so youre concentrating on finding a particular answer. scanning involves moving your eyes quickly down the page to seek specific words and phrases. for example:” severe winter weather during the first three weeks of january caused hundreds of deaths in europe. a massive dome of cold air became entrenched over northern scandinavia and northern ussk in mid-december of 1986. it migrated westward and southward so that by january 12 much of the continent was under its influence on that day, central bug land had its coldest day since 1945 with london recording 160f (-90c).in leningrad ussr temperature dipped to -490f (-450c), reportedly the coldest in 250 years.”according to the passage london recorded its coldest day inyears when the temperature dropped to -90c.a 40 b 41 c 45 d 43 in a word, scanning is a reading technique to be used when you want to find specific information quickly. in scanning you have a question in your mind when you read. only to find the answer, so you can ignore the unrelated information. when youre reading a text in order to find specific information, scanning it first to get an idea of the way the text is organized can be a big help. visual clues-things like numbers and dates, lists, sections and subtitles, dialogues, quotations and recurring phrases are easy to see in a text, and can often give us a good picture of its organization and content before we start reading. when we read in our own language we usually notice the visual clues automatically. when youre reading in english, paying more attentions to visual clues before you read can improve your comprehension and make your reading more efficiently.when you know what kind of information youre looking for in a reading text. for example, when youre researching a paper or answer comprehension question. scanning the text can help you in three ways: a. by letting you knows whether the text contains any of the sorts of information youre seeking. b. by giving you an impression of the authors aims. c. by giving you an idea of where in the text, you will find the information that is relevant to you. all of these advantages of scanning can make you a more effective and faster reader.iv. enriching and enlarging the background knowledgelanguage is a special cultural phenomenon; it is formed into practice social life. every language emerges and develops in a particular social and historical environment. so, each language reflects the unique cultural phenomenon in different historical periods of a society. if you want to learn english well, you must enrich and enlarge your background knowledge. through the background knowledge, you can master the grammar, to improve the accuracy of expression, can stimulate your interest in learning, can improve your communication ability, the important point contributes to the english reading.enriching and enlarging the background knowledge are the keys to understanding an article. as we know, we all have experiences of reading something which does not contain many new words or new structures, but we still find it difficult to understand its meaning. for example:“the candidate met his waterloo in the elections.”“everyman has in himself a continent of undiscovered character; happy is he who acts the columbus to his own soul.”the reason is that reading comprehension is constituted by simple and easy word and structure comprehension and difficult background comprehension. in other word, when we read, maybe we know each word and structure. but we dont know what the sentence means because of lack of background knowledge. if we master the grammar and word knowledge, we can only understand the meaning of word; however, in order to know the abstruse meaning, we should have the aid of the word meaning as well as background knowledge and inference. every english article must cover the social cultural knowledge. the knowledge is about politics, history, values, belief, religion, moralities, geography, thoughts pattern, habit and custom, outlook on life, etc. if we dont understand the background knowledge we certainly come across lots of barriers in reading process. we can say “knowing a language is to know the grammar, vocabulary, listening and the culture that together determines how we are appropriate to use the language in living”learners should realize that culture is very important in language learning. as we know, reading and writing english material are often concerned with western culture. if the learner lack cultural background knowledge, it will be hinder their comprehension in reading. for example, we mean pornographic by the word “huang” in chinese, but in english, “blue” is taken instead of “yellow”. if learners dont know, they will not understand what “blue film” or “blue video tapes” meaning by the words seem to be quite easy. this illustrates that the word from which different cultural background is the result of impact on language. as the second learner we should pay more attention on culture background in leaning idioms and literature works; otherwise, we have no mean to understand the implication of words and passages correctly. there are some methods to develop students cultural interest in english reading. firstly, teachers should seek cultural information concerned in textbooks and other study materials then sort out them to learn at a proper time. secondly, let students read some book about english and american culture under teachers guide. thirdly, let students have discussions about the differences between chinese and english culture, make them know the importance of culture in english reading, analyze mistakes made by students, and then correct them one by one. fourthly, in the light of specific condition according to the needs of learning and communication, the teacher should supplement some cultural background knowledge that students can understand. last but not least, we should correct the con