提高中学生英语阅读能力的策略.doc

Strategies to Improve Students English Reading Abilities in Secondary SchoolsAbstractReading ability is very important in our daily life and study. Reading ability as one of the four basic skills for secondary school students plays an important role in learning English. For secondary school students, their English reading ability greatly influences their English level, because reading will affect the improvement of other basic skills. Reading ability generates learning power that helps secondary students know themselves and others better. Because vocabulary and grammar knowledge are vital to English reading, teachers should direct students to learn and accumulate with systematic and reliable strategies. It is important to consider the students actual English level when teachers choose the materials for them. And I will talk about how to deal with the new words during their reading according to context and guess the meanings of unfamiliar words. Students should master the basic reading skills such as skimming and scanning, which can provide them the right way to gain the reading goals efficiently. All in all, this paper aims to analyze the factors that influence the improvement of students abilities in reading comprehension, and mainly discusses the strategies to improve their English reading abilities. In other words, it will give some advice to help students to overcome the obstacles in the process of reading and help them to master some reading skills. Students can improve their reading efficiency if they use these strategies properly and practise a lot.Key Words: reading ability; strategies; secondary school students提高中学生英语阅读能力的策略内容摘要英语阅读能力在我们的日常生活和学习中是非常重要的。对中学生来说，阅读能力是四项基本技能中的一项，在英语学习中占有重要的位置。阅读能力直接影响到他们的英语水平，因为作为四项基本技能之一的阅读能力势必会影响到其他三项基本技能的提高。通过阅读掌握的学习能力帮助中学生更好地了解自己和他人。因为词汇和语法知识对英语阅读来说至关重要，老师应当引导学生利用系统可靠的方法去学习和积累。给学生挑选难度相当的材料是很重要的。本文将谈论在阅读时如何根据上下文去理解词句以及根据单词的构成去猜测不熟悉的单词的含义。学生要掌握基本的阅读技巧，比如说略读和扫读,这些方法将大大提高阅读效率。总之，本文意在论述在阅读理解过程当中，哪些因素阻碍了学生的阅读能力的提高以及提高学生阅读能力的策略。学生在阅读过程中能够有效地利用这些策略并多加练习，就能有效地提高他们的阅读水平。关键词：英语阅读能力；策略；中学生Strategies to Improve Students English Reading Abilities in Secondary SchoolsContents1 Introduction . 12 Theoretical Framework.22.1 Psychological Mechanisms and Cognitive Process in English Reading .2 2.2 Models of Reading.3 2.3 Schema Theory53 Factors Hindering the Improvement of Students Reading Abilities.7 3.1 The Lack of Vocabulary.7 3.2 The Lack of Relevant Grammar Knowledge.8 3.3 The Lack of Reading Skills.9 3.4 The Lack of Background Knowledge.94 Strategies to Improve Students English Reading Abilities.11 4.1 The Preparation before Reading11 4.2 Training Grammatical Skills with Examples and Practice124.3 Developing the Vocabulary.134.4 Training Reading Skills at Discourse Level 195 Conclusion .24Notes.26Works Cited.28Acknowledgements29Declaration of Thesis Originality30 Strategies to Improve Students English Reading Abilities in Secondary Schools1 IntroductionAs one of the four basic skills for secondary school students, reading ability plays an important role in learning English. For secondary school students, their English reading ability greatly affects their English level, because reading is one of the four basic skills, which influences the improvement of other basic skills as well. Reading is not only beneficial to students English learning, but also can broaden their knowledge, develop their interest as well as help them obtain the ability to have continuous and life-long learning. For secondary school students who just begin to learn English or those who have a relatively lower level of English, good reading comprehension can give them more confidence to learn English well. As most people know, reading ability refers to the reading skills that secondary school students bring to the text. These skills include using skills to guess the meanings of the words, skills to skim and scan, to improve the reading speed and to improve the reading ability in various activities.With such kinds of abilities secondary school students can have a better understanding of the meanings that the author wants to express, which is of vital importance.2 Theoretical Framework2.1 Psychological Mechanisms and Cognitive Process in English Reading“Reading comprehension which is consistent with language comprehension that is a complicated and general comprehension is a complicated psycholinguistic process. It is an interactive process between the reader and the text. ” 1 Gui Shichun holds that:There exists close relationship between intellect and reading. Foreign language learners with good intellect can obtain more information in the process of reading, for reading is a very important way to acquire knowledge and develop intellectual emotion and it is a psychological activity.2Good understanding can be achieved with efficiently reading methods. We can develop some useful and important reading skills such as scanning, skimming, silent reading, instead of reading the whole material word by word. “The research and development of reading psychology show that it is unnecessary to speakorhear every word if students want to understand the meaning of a text. It is completely possible that they can directly understand its meaning while they read a text.”3 During the reading, the background information is vital to the reader and the some linguistic knowledge plays an indispensable role in the understanding as well. So the students have to be equipped with some general knowledge about word-formation, grammar, semantics, syntax and some learning about the social atmosphere, historical and cultural background, educational systems, customs and features and so on.2.2 Models of Reading 2.2.1 The Bottom-up ModelThe reading process is initially regarded a decoding process of reconstructing the authors intended meaning via recognizing the printed letters and words, and building up a meaning for a text from the smallest textual units at the “bottom” up to the largest unit at the “top” in a strict hierarchical way. 4 “In bottom-up processing, the readers build up a meaning from the black marks on the page recognizing letters and words, working out sentence structure.”5 The model suggests that readers deal with these levels of units in strict accordance with their sizes. That is to say, one stage of the process is over before the next stage begins. However, this model is not convincing in explaining the whole reading process because it is really hard to know when the reader stops processing words and moves to processing sentences. In an actual reading process, there exists no clear-cut borderline between stages of the process. Owing to its own deficiencies, the bottom-up model gradually gives way to the top-down model.2.2.2 The Top-down ModelIt seems that the “top-down” model offers a neat converse to the “bottom-up” model, in which one might expect that the process begins with the largest unit and then proceeds to deal with smaller and smaller units ending with the expectations of the reader. This plays a crucial role in the reading process. “Goodman views reading as a process of hypothesis verification, whereby the readers use selected data from the text to confirm their guesses.”6 It should be clarified that the top-down model stresses the important role of not only the readers active participation in the reading process, but also everything in the readers background knowledge and previous experience. Like the bottom-up model, the top-down model also poses serious problems in interpreting the reading process. As stated before, with the bottom-up model, it is difficult to see when the reader stops; then with the top-down model, the difficulty is deciding where the reader should begin. The top-down perspective to the reading process is so highly acclaimed that it is viewed as a substitute rather than a complement to the old-fashioned bottom-up view of reading. 2.2.3 The Interactive ModelAs research work in this field continues in a more profound and comprehensive way, a brand-new model, named the interactive approach, is ushered into the area. As its name suggests, the most prominent feature of the model is that a regular sequence does not occur in the approach. Instead, it is a pattern that is synthesized and based on information that is provided simultaneously from several sources. In other words, the decoding at different levels and the readers background knowledge come into effect simultaneously in the process.Reading, as a complex process, contains a number of stages, such as: the recognition of words, the identification of intra-sentential relationship and the organization of main ideas. In order to analyze the actual process, linguists have made continuous efforts to model it. With regard to the way in which the series of stages take place, there are three schools of opinion. One group of linguists describes reading as a bottom-up process. They maintain that the process starts from the very bottom stage and proceeds until it ends at the top stage. Advocates of the top-down model hold the view that the expectations of the reader play a crucial role in the processing of the text. Therefore, the process begins with the readers expectations and hypotheses of the text as a whole and then proceeds to smaller units of the text. Still another school claims that the reading process should be an interactive one. That is, the series of stages do not occur in a sequential order. The stages, together with the readers personal expectations, may take place simultaneously, so that they may interact with and complement one another.2.3 Schema TheoryActually, the schemata discussed so far refers to the readers background knowledge. The role of background knowledge in language comprehension has been formalized as schema theory, which has as one of its fundamental tenets that text, any text, either spoken or written does not by itself carry meaning. Rather, according to schema theory, a text only provides directions for readers as to how they should retrieve or construct meaning from their own, previously acquired knowledge. This previously acquired knowledge structures are called schemata:According to schema theory, the process of interpretation is guided by the principle that every input is mapped against some existing schema and that all aspects of that schema must be compatible with the input information. This principle results in two basic modes of information processing, called bottom-up and top-down processing. Bottom-up processing is evoked by the incoming data; the features of the data enter the system through the best fitting, bottom-level schemata. Schemata are hierarchically organized, from most general at the top to most specific at the bottom. As these bottom-level schemata converge into a higher level, more general schemata, these become activated, too. Bottom-up processing is therefore, called data-driven; top-down processing, on the other hand, occurs as the system makes general predictions based on higher level, general schemata and then searches the input for information to fit into these partially satisfied, higher order schemata. Top-down processing is therefore, called conceptually driven. An important aspect of top-down and bottom-up processing is that both should be occurring at all levels simultaneously. The data that are needed to instantiate or fill out, the schemata become available through bottom-up processing: top-down processing facilitates their assimilation if they are anticipated by or consistent with the listener/readers conceptual expectations. Bottom-up processing ensures that the listeners/readers will be sensitive to information that is novel or that does not fit their ongoing hypotheses about the content or structure of the text; top-down processing helps the listeners/readers to resolve ambiguities or to select between alternative possible interpretations of the incoming data.73 Factors Hindering the Improvement of Students Reading Abilities3.1 The Lack of VocabularyThe vocabulary plays an important role in the process of learning English. Through vocabulary the information and knowledge can be conveyed to the readers to get a better understanding of what the writer wants to express. Many students do poor in reading because they fail to recognize the importance of vocabulary which performs as a bridge between the reader and the writer. If one has not accumulated enough vocabulary, it is difficult for him or her to do the English reading.There are many reasons for students small vocabulary which lead to their poor understanding of what they are reading. Firstly, they dont try their best to remember the words when they learn them. Memorizing the useful words and expressions asks for hard working, patience and persistence and those take students a lot of time and energy to concentrate on them. English words have many unique characters which are worth of learning and students can remember them with the help of words pronunciation. Secondly, they cannot figure out the words that have learned before in the reading because they do not review them regularly and lack frequent usage and practice. Thirdly, they cannot study the words through the word-formation such as root, prefix, suffix. Vocabulary is the most important element in their reading comprehension, so the teachers should realize the obstacles brought out by the lack of vocabulary and take actions to strengthen this kind of belief by asking the students to practise as much as they can and emphasize the importance of a large vocabulary. At the same time, teachers should instruct students to use the effective ways to enlarge their vocabulary instead of using the simple methods such as remembering the word lists without using them in the real context.3.2 The Lack of Relevant Grammar KnowledgeGrammar knowledge is always considered as an essential part for students to learn a foreign or second language effectively because there is no natural atmosphere for them to learn and practise as the native speakers do. By using the natures and rules worked out by linguistics and grammarians, students can master the characters of the words organization and arrange them under grammar rules into permissible sentences quickly and efficiently. Thus their grammar knowledge can lead them to make a good performance on the four skills in English, of course, including their good performance on reading comprehension.In the English classes in China, teachers seem to overemphasize the rules of the grammar while ignoring the practical use of these rules. Students may feel they are lack of relative grammar knowledge due to the following reasons. To begin with, students focus on the choice test in the exam which always leads them to do many related exercises. They just need to decide whether the sentences or words usage are correct or not, but they cannot tell what the problems are exactly and fail to correct them by themselves, sometimes they just guess the answers. Then, in English examinations, students who learn grammar rules well can get the high mark, therefore, for a long time teachers just pay all attention to the grammar rules and grammar pattern. However, they fail to teach the students how to apply what they have learned to solve the practical problems and analyze the sentences. Last but not least, we should clearly bear something in mind that the grammar rules are not the aims of our foreign language learning, we just need them to help the students learn better. During the reading process, the students have much access to the grammar knowledge, the teachers are supposed to help and guide the students to learn by reading and read better by learning. 3.3 The Lack of Reading SkillsReading skills always affect students efficiency of reading. Their reading skills can help them read efficiently and have a better understanding of the materials. Because of these reading skills students can become more confident in learning English because they can use English as a valuable tool to enlarge their knowledge and broaden their horizon.Many students have various bad habits which greatly affect their reading ability. For example, some students just read word by word through the whole reading, this absolutely decreases their reading speed. And some students will be stopped by some unfamiliar or difficult words or phrases. If these cases occur frequently, the students will feel frustrated. So the importance of reading skills is self-evident. The teachers ought to instruct the students to develop some common and most useful skills such as skimming, scanning, silent reading etc. And the students can take advantage of them according to their own current level and efficiency. What more, the actual practice of these skills is vital to the improvement of the reading abilities. 3.4 The Lack of Background Knowledge Language as the keystone of culture is tightly intertwined with culture. Learning a language is inseparable from learning its culture. When learning a foreign or second language, we should not only learn the mere imitation of the pronunciation, grammar, words, and idioms, but also learn to see the world as the native speakers do, that is to say, learn the ways in which the foreign language reflects the ideas, customs, and behavior of the society, learn to understand th