毕业设计（论文）-限时阅读练习对提高高中生阅读理解能力的调查.doc

本科生毕业设计（论文）( 2013届 )题 目： 限时阅读练习对提高高中生 阅读理解能力的调查 学 院： 外 国 语 学 院 专 业： 英 语 学生姓名： 学号： 09090319 指导教师： 职称： 教授 合作导师： 职称： 完成时间： 2013 年 4 月 22 日 成 绩： 浙江师范大学本科毕业设计(论文)正文目 录Abstract.ii摘要ii1.Introduction12. Literature review22.1 Timed reading exercise and reading comprehension ability22.1.1 Timed reading exercise22.1.2 Reading comprehension ability22.2 Related theories about reading22.2.1 Scheme theory22.3 Review of related studies33. Instruments53.1 Research hypothesis53.2 Subjects53.3 Instruments53.3.1 Questionnaire53.3.2 Procedure of timed reading exercise53.3.3 Post-exercise interview63.4 Data collection and analysis64. Results and discussion64.1 Discussion of questionnaire results64.2 Discussion of exercise results144.3 Discussion of interview results155. Conclusion15Works Cited17Appendix.192Improving Reading Comprehension Ability of Senior High School Students by Timed Reading ExerciseImproving Reading Comprehension Ability of Senior High School Students by Timed Reading ExerciseZhang JingjingAbstract: As an essential part of English tests, reading comprehension is very demanding for middle school students. This study aims to compare reading comprehension of the students with the timed reading exercise to that of the students who were given non-timed reading exercise. The hypothesis is that students having the timed reading comprehension exercise perform better than those having the non-timed reading exercise. The experiment involves two classes of Xiaoshan No. 5 Senior Middle School. The outcome variable was measured by English exams given at semester end. Before and after the experiment, questionnaire and interview were involved respectively. Data from questionnaire and interview and the results of the experiment were analyzed. It was found that if students applied the timed reading exercise in addition to the other reading strategies when doing the reading comprehension, their reading comprehension ability will be significantly improved.Key words: Reading comprehension; timed reading exercise; improvement in reading comprehension ability限时阅读练习对提高高中生阅读理解能力的调查张晶晶摘要：阅读理解是国内英语考试的必要组成部分，但是对于高中生来说阅读理解有一定的难度。为了更好的理解文章，他们采取了很多阅读理解的策略，其中包括阅读理解限时练习. 对于阅读理解，采用阅读理解练习很有可能非常有效。本次调查在浙江省萧山五中的两个班级中进行，对采用阅读理解的学生的阅读理解能力和自由练习的学生的阅读理解能力作对比。调查表明，采用阅读理解的学生的阅读理解能力高于平时自由练习的学生的阅读理解能力。关键词：阅读理解；阅读理解限时练习；提高阅读理解能力 Improving Reading Comprehension Ability of Senior High School Students by Timed Reading ExerciseFLC 2009 (03) (English) Zhang JingjingTutor: Yu Zechao1. IntroductionAs reading is the foundation for students to learn vocabulary, grammar, writing and so on, English teachers need to focus on cultivating students reading comprehension ability. The new Course Standard for senior high school explicitly points out that the goal of reading skills is to cultivate the ability to apply reading strategies, language sense and obtain and handle information during the process of reading. In addition, English reading comprehension occupies a large part of English test in China, and it is also difficult for students. In order to understand the authors intent, it is necessary to judge, reason, figure out and grasp the authors mentality. Therefore, reading comprehension can be used to test the students language proficiency, and it is particularly important to improve the senior high school students reading comprehension ability. In the teaching process of English reading, when the teacher adopts the way to teach student, it should be based on learner-centered instruction. Some teachers in some senior high schools have adopted the timed reading exercise for teaching reading, requiring students to read some passages and then respond to questions that are related to these passages within the specified time every day. To some extent, if students using the method of timed reading exercise, it will help accelerate students reading speed, improve comprehension, and promote the improvement of the efficiency of teaching. On the other hand, English exams in the senior high school generally require students to complete reading five articles and finish related questions respectively within 40 minutes. Looking from an objective aspect, the normal reading comprehension exercise creates a good environment to help students arrange time properly and be relaxed to face the reading comprehension questions in the exam. In this experiment, questionnaires were firstly collected from two classes of No.5 Xiaoshan Senior School so that their present reading strategies and reading habits could be clearly known. Then according to the result of the questionnaires, using schema theory as the theoretical basis, the experiment was managed to apply the timed reading exercise. After that, interview was carried out to testify whether it is feasible to apply the timed reading exercise in addition to the analysis of the result of timed reading exercise.2. Literature review2.1 Timed reading exercise and reading comprehension ability2.1.1 Timed reading exerciseAs we all know, comprehending what one reads in English is imperative for a secondary school student to be successful in school, especially when they take the English exam. And it is very important to locate the information that the students want when they are doing the reading comprehension. Now doing timed reading exercise is more difficult for students. Timed reading exercise has the similar meaning as speeded reading exercise, which means finishing the exercise of reading comprehension in a specified time. It requires students to read the passages at a high speed and then respond to the following questions that relate to these articles. In doing timed reading exercise, students are supposed to use some other strategies for accelerating their pace and understanding the articles quickly. 2.1.2 Reading comprehension abilityReading comprehension ability is the ability to understand the meaning or importance of something in the process of reading, which means the ability to deal with new words and sentences of the passage. To achieve the goal of comprehension, the students are required to accumulate vocabulary, which is the foundation of all things, relate the textural material to their own background knowledge. Meanwhile, applying some reading strategies such as skimming, scanning and trying to guess the new words from the context will be better.2.2 Related theories about reading2.2.1 Scheme theorySchema is a term in cognitive psychology, which was put forward firstly by Kant in 1781. Schema is the abstract knowledge frameworks, which can help the readers achieve reading competence. By the late 1970s, schema theory has been developed and improved. According to schema theory, reading comprehension is the interactive process between the readers background knowledge and language materials. The significance of this theory to the reading process is significant. When readers begin reading, they activate the schema to understand the passage. With the deepening of the reading, the readers are constantly adjusted to apply the correlation schema.Carrell (1983) proposed two types of information starting mode: the first is “data-driven”; the second is “concept-driven”. “Data- driven” means that the readers start from the most basic information at the bottom of the article, entering the relevant information or filling the blank of the schema layer by layer. “Concept-driven” means that the readers start from the highest meaning structure of the article, bringing in relevant schema to analyze and forecast. In the process of reading comprehension, these two modes simultaneously at various levels combined with the content provided by the article and existing schema, the readers constantly make forecasts and assumptions, and modify the authentication with the reading process. In other words, the articles and the cognition of the readers to the authors meaning, content and world are united by schema, and it also improves the role of the readers in the reading and promotes interaction between the readers and articles. This kind of interaction to a certain extent makes up for the inadequacy of the readers language ability.2.3 Review of related studiesScholars at home and abroad have done a lot of research of teaching English reading. Most of the findings show that the schema theory reveals how peoples existing knowledge structure affects their reading comprehension, which provides a theoretical basis for people to recognize the reading comprehension process and improve students English reading ability, injecting the new vitality into the English reading teaching. Beck and Carpenter (1986) improved the students comprehension ability through the intensive training of the text, vocabulary, and background knowledge. In the process of strengthening the students reading comprehension, they were trained to identify the paragraph topic and summarize the articles. In one of the experiments，the students received a series of training on how to determine the focus of the article through asking questions. In another experiment, the students are taught to ask the questions that teachers may ask, and learn to think over the articles structure and purpose, which is not only mastering of the meaning of the word. In these experimental researches, cognitive processes intertwined with the process of motivation, and the results show that the students whose comprehension ability was poor improved obviously in the comprehension tests later after the training.Domestic scholar Shang Xuejun (2011) and Mu Wanzhu (2011) firstly introduced cognitive-schema theory which has played an important role in the foreign language reading teaching, and the cognitive- schema theory is also the essential guarantee to realize the effective reading teaching. Afterwards, the application of cognitive-schema theory to the foreign language reading teaching was briefly introduced, which reduced the deviation in the students reading comprehension and improved the foreign language teaching effectively.How to prove schema theory really plays an important role in the reading teaching? Niu Haining (2012) has done an in-depth and meticulous analysis on the senior high English reading teaching, and put forward the hypothesis that English reading teaching under the guidance of the association and schema theory will get a better result than that of traditional teaching. Then the author verified the assumption through the teaching experiment and questionnaire survey method. And finally, the conclusion of this research has borne out the hypothesis that applying the association and schema theory to the English teaching can have a positive impact on the senior high English teaching and effectively enhance learners reading comprehension ability. Kei Mihara (2011) conducted an empirical survey to explore the connection between the effective use of students reading strategies before their reading and their reading comprehension ability. Participants were asked to apply reading strategies to read an article, and understand and answer some questions. They completely finish reading the first four paragraphs, finally reading the fourth paragraph after three weeks, and were asked to complete a questionnaire. The results showed that the effective reading strategies could help students improve their reading comprehension ability.In the mid-70s, as the focus of applied linguistics research was from “teachers” to “learners”, the learning process of foreign language learners and their individual differences has been paid more attention to and the direction of research has shifted from the original teaching methods to multivariate research which centered on students. In addition, the learning strategies have gradually become the hot issue of linguistics (Wen Q, 1996). Effective reading strategies help to improve the students reading comprehension ability. Therefore, everyone has launched a research. In the domestic researches in recent years, someone has proposed to apply the timed reading exercise. Jiang Xiaoling of Han Yin middle school (2012) introduced students several strategies to train students reading ability in addition to a variety of reading methods, the students could also use the dictionary, do the reading notes, form good reading habits, as well as study the reading comprehension questions and auxiliary classroom teaching of different task types. Of course, the author also mentioned the training strategy of timed reading exercise. And she believed that applying the targeted timed reading exercise consistently, this would add an unimagined effect. In addition, Ren Jing (2010) pointed out that the improving reading ability is one of the goals of New English curriculum standards. At the same time, she integrated her own to practical condition, talking about how to improve the students ability of reading comprehension. She thought that teachers could use a relatively fixed period of time and assign a certain amount of reading tasks to students and guide students some reading methods at the same time. After a period of time, she believed that students under the guidance of the teacher would reduce the fear to reading, and meanwhile improve the students reading comprehension ability.The results of literature search showed that there was only a little research on the timed reading exercise in the foreign countries. And Browning（2003）、Bell（2001） did the research about timed reading which was related to timed reading exercise. Brownings discussed how to improve students reading speed through the control of time and the application of reading strategies. He thought the timed reading involves the use of various reading strategies, combing with the classroom practice and a wide range of time to read at the same time. Timed reading isnt simply to read and take the notes as soon as possible, but rather through teachers guidance in combination with a variety of strategies.Timothy Bell (1998), through the experiment, divided the participants into two groups - the intensive reading and extensive reading group, experimental group (n = 14) received the extensive reading program consisting of class readers, a class library of books for students to borrow and regular visit to the library providing access to a much larger collection of graded reader (up to 2000 kinds of books). The extensive reading program is described in detail in Bell (1998). An inventory of readers was compiled, and reading records maintained to record titles read and the time subjects spent reading each week. The control group (n = 12) received an entirely different reading program which was intensive in character, being based on the reading of short articles and the completion of tasks designed to milk the texts for grammar, lexis, and rhetorical patterns. Finally, the experiments showed that the extensive reading group with good control of time did better than “intensive reading” group in reading comprehension.3. Instruments3.1 Research hypothesis The research hypothesis was that the student with timed reading exercise would perform better than the students with non-timed reading exercise. And the author predicts that timed reading exercise can improve students reading ability.3.2 SubjectsThe subjects of the experiment are students in NO.5 Xiaoshan Senior high School, Class 1 and Class 4 in Grade 2. The two classes have the similar average score of reading comprehension in the final exam of the second semester of Grade 1. The author chose students in Class 1 to do timed reading exercise every two days and the students in class 4 did the reading comprehension exercise with no time limit. In addition, both two classes had 45 students. And the beginning time of the test is at the beginning of this semester, and the ending time is at the end of this semester.3.3 Instruments3.3.1 Questionnaire14 questions were designed, including interest of reading, realization of the importance of English reading and reading strategies, reading habits, doing reading comprehension exercise habits and reading speed. The students of both classes were asked to finish the questionnaire and then the data was recorded and analyzed by the author of the thesis. Through the questionnaire, the current situation of students of these two classes was collected and analyzed.3.3.2 Procedure of timed reading exerciseThis exercise was given from September, and 44 students in the control class did their exercise of reading comprehension with no time limit, while 44 students in the experimental class were asked to take the exercise of reading comprehension within the required time limits. The exercise is from the book Victor English: Senior English Reading 6+1. There were 3 articles in each test, 15 questions were given after the articles. Each question has 2 scores and the total score is 30. The students in experiment class were asked to finish the reading within 25 minutes and handed in their answer sheet. The students in control class just finished the exercise of reading comprehension freely and handed in their answer sheet before going home. Their scores were recorded by the teacher. This reading exercise was done twice a week.3.3.3 Post-exercise interviewAfter the final exam at the end of the semester, several students who had been randomly selected from the experimental class were interviewed. The students were asked some questions about the inte