英语本科毕业论文-浅谈如何提高中学生的阅读能力.doc

Liaoning Normal University（2011届）本科生毕业论文(设计)题 目： 浅谈如何提高中学生的阅读能力学 院： 外国语学院专 业： 英语班级序号： 1班01号学 号：学生姓名：指导教师： 2011年5月Table of ContentsTable of Contents.iTable of Contents. iiAbstract in Chinese.iiiAbstract in English.ivChapter 1 Introduction11.1 Research Background11.2 The Significance of the Research1Charpter2 Literature Review32.1 What is Reading32.2 Models of Reading Process32.2.1 Bottom-up Model32.2.2 Top-down Model42.2.3 Interactive Model52.3 Reading Strategies52.3.1 The Importance of Reading Strategies52.3.2 A Category of Reading Strategies6Chapter 3 Barriers in English Reading73.1 Teachers Problems73.1.1Teachers Teaching73.1.2Teachers Manner73.1.3Teachers Method73.2 Students Problems83.2.1Lack of Vocabulary83.2.2Lack of Background Knowledge83.2.3Lack of Reading Skills9Chapter 4 Ways to Improve Reading Ability104.1 Improving Comprehension Ability104.1.1 Enriching and Enlarging the Background Knowledge104.1.2 Mastering the Correct Methods of Thinking114.1.2.1 Identifying the Topic Sentence124.1.2.2 Prediction and inference in reading124.1.3 Studying Grammar and Rhetoric Knowledge144.2 Improving Reading Speed144.2.1 Games for Guessing the Meaning of the New Words144.2.1.1 Using the Word-Formation to Surmise the Meaning of the New Words144.2.1.2 Guessing Meaning from the Context154.2.1.3 Using the Relationship between Paragraphs to Guess the New Word Meanings154.2.2 Developing the Good Reading Habits and Method.164.3 Inspire the Interest of Reading174.4 Be Confident and Active in Reading18Chapter5 Conclusion19Bibliography20Acknowledgements21浅谈如何提高中学生的阅读能力摘要： 阅读是英语课程中不可缺少的一部分。它是外语学习获得信息的重要途径，是一个复杂的心理过程。当前，初中英语阅读课上仍以教师讲解、学生记笔记为主，即使有检测阅读理解效果的提问或讨论，也往往流于形式，或是局限于与个别同学的相互应和上，大多数学生只是听众。学生未能真正参与阅读教学过程，只是被动的接受。要改变这种现状，教师在阅读教学中要做的不仅仅是对课文内容和知识点的讲解，更重要的是积极创设使学生从内心意愿参与阅读的条件和氛围，明确学习目标，对学生进行阅读方法和策略的指导，提高学生的阅读能力。关键词： 阅读能力；阅读教学；阅读速度ivOn the Improvement of Middle School Students Reading AbilityOn the Improvement of Middle School Students Reading AbilityAbstract: Reading is an indispensable part of English curriculum. It is an important way of gaining information in foreign language learning. It is a complex psychological process. Nowadays, teachers-explaining、students-making notes are chief in English reading lessons in secondary school. Even if there is a question or discussion to test the effect of reading comprehension, it often exits in name only or it just confines to echo with some individuals. Most students are only audience. Students cant take part in the reading process genuinely, they only accept passively. To change this situation, what the teachers do in the reading teaching is not just to explain the context and the language points. The more important thing is to create the condition and the atmosphere positively to stimulate students to participate, clear-out the studying objectives, guide the reading methods and strategies, and improve students reading competency. Key Words: reading competency; reading teaching; reading speedChapter1 Introduction1.1 Research BackgroundReading plays an important role in English study, especially in the examinations in recent years. It fills up a large component of the examination and occupies a great deal of points. Teachers and students should pay great attention to the importance of reading. As a teachers role, we shouldnt hold this assumption, view students as plants waiting passively to be fed and watered. (Webmaster, 2007) But I think students should be regarded as explorers, active learners who bring a lot to the learning process. We should bridge the gap and help the students become efficient readers and achieve efficient reading. As we know, reading can stimulate students interest in learning English. Many students English levels have improved unconsciously during the reading. Without reading, nothing can be done in the development of the competences in listening, speaking, writing, and translating. The purpose of English teaching in Middle School is to have a basic training for students in the competences of listening, speaking, reading and writing, it lays stress on cultivating reading competence. Reading is the competence of understanding and absorbing written information. Reading should be regarded as an active psycholinguistic process. (Huangmin, 2007) Reading can help you enlarge your vocabulary, enrich your language knowledge, improve students1.2 The Significance of the ResearchAs a universal language, the importance of English is realized gradually by people, especially in our country. In our countrys Middle School, reading is greatly emphasized, the purpose of reading is no longer to make students get the information of the passage and finish the test, moreover, the student should master the methods and independent ability of reading, and that will be useful for their further learning, we should know, the final purpose for learning English is to let students be able to use the language, use it to communicate with others, not only finish a test to pass the exam or get high mark. As we all know, reading has been playing an important role in learning a foreign language all the time. It has been considered as one of the most important parts of foreign language learning. Without reading, nothing can be done in the development. Actually, we can also tell from our own experience that its quite valuable to receive special training in English reading. Through vast amount of reading, we can achieve necessary message we need. The more materials we master, the more capable we will become. In addition, we can come to know the knowledge about the local conditions and customs in Englishspeaking countries through reading, not mentioning historical and geographical knowledge.According to the purpose of reading, we may divide reading into applied language reading and learning language reading. The aim of the former is mainly for achieving knowledge and message while the latter is for improving linguistic ability gradually. Mastering linguistic knowledge (including phones, grammar and vocabulary) and developing linguistic ability (including listening, speaking, reading and writing) promote and supplement each other. As a result, only after adding linguistic knowledge can a great amount of reading become easier and easier. Meanwhile, the proficient abilities of linguistic sense and dealing with English sentences achieved in reading practice may improve the accuracy and efficiency of reading comprehension. In a word, only through wide reading can we broaden our outlook and improve our sense of knowledge.Reading teaching is a key to open other doors, to enable students to see in the English reading field, their vision has far exceeded the original scope of a single language domain, and reaches to a level that of the life of people who hasnt experienced. They can be exposed to a variety of materials, poetry, novel, and various science and technology books that they are interested in and so on. Britains writer Francis Bacon said: “Studies serve for cheer, enough to Gaming, enough talent. Only when students know the real charm of English reading, can they fall in love with it from the inside，and learn it well. Reading is the key to learning English reading, and the key for students to be inspired by the reading teaching and learning. The way is reading more English teaching materials, and then, they can improve the overall standard of English reading.But the truth is that many students hate reading, they do not know how to read the passage faster, use which method can make it easier to get the information, even they cant understand what the author really wants to say because of the lack of the background knowledge. So, find ways to solve these problems above is very important, and this paper will propose a solution to these problems about students reading ability. Chapter2 Literature ReviewThe purpose of the study is to improve students reading ability, so we need to review the research of previous reading, reading patterns, and reading strategy. Reading is the interaction process between readers and authors and a proactive activity. In 1997, the Houghton Mifflin Company presented the definition about reading which is widely accepted. Reading is an existing knowledge by the reader; the information implied in the article and read the article to understand the significance of the context of the process. In recent decades, scholars both at home and abroad paid great attention to the theoretical study on reading (Zhang Weiyou, 1995; Carrell, 1984; Goodman, KS, 1967; Smith, F, 1971; Rumelhart, 1984 & Nuttall.C., 2002, etc.) They made extensive research from psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, cognitive psychology, and various angles of the first and second language and foreign language reading .They had proposed bottom-up model, top-down model, and interactive model.朗读显示对应的拉丁字符的拼音字典2.1 What is Reading Establishing a clear definition of reading is not easy. Various definitions of reading have been given by many language experts and most of them agree that the major purpose of reading should be the construction of meaning-comprehending and actively responding to what is read. One of the most widely accepted definition of reading goes like the following: “Reading is the process of constructing meaning through the dynamic interaction among the readers existing knowledge, the information suggested by the text being read and the context of the reading situation”(Wangqiang , 2002).Theories of reading instruction have also shifted greatly during the 20th century. Some of these reading instruction approaches are listed below:2.2 Models of Reading Process2.2.1 Bottom-up ModelEarly works in second language reading assumed that reading was a decoding process of reconstructing the authors intended meaning from the printed letters and words, and building up meanings of a text from the smallest units at the “bottom” (letters and words) to larger units at the “top” (phrases, clauses, inter-sentence linkages). This was termed as code-emphasis, text-driven, phonics-based or “bottom-up” model (Zakaluk, 1996). Experts who hold this view contend that the process of reading begins with letters and their sounds, and then moves to words and meaning. This model suggests that what makes poor readers poor reading ability is their inability to recognize words rapidly and construct an accurate representation. They have less well developed automotive linguistic skills (Wallace, 1992). Eskey (1998) pointed out that for proper interpretation of texts, bottom-up skills must be mastered to take much of the guesswork out of reading, and he observed that rapid and accurate decoding of language was important to any kind of reading and especially important to the second language reading. Good readers know the language. They can decode, with occasional exceptions, both the lexical units and syntactic structures they encounter in texts and they do so for most time not by guessing from context or prior knowledge of the world, but by a kind of automatic identification that requires no conscious cognitive efforts.The implications of this reading model for reading instruction are that students need to begin reading by learning the letter names, associating the letter names with their sounds, and then be shown how to blend these sounds together into words. Stated in Goughs (1972) more technical terms the reading system, from a “bottom-up” perspective, functions in sequence as follows. First, the graphitic information enters through the visual system and is transformed at the first level from a letter character to a sound, that is, from a graphitic representation to a phonemic representation. Second, the phonemic representation i, converted, at level two, into a word. The meaning units or words then pass on it. The third level and meaning is assimilated into the knowledge system. Input is i. transformed from low-level sensory information to meaning through a series of successively higher-level encodings, with information flow that is entirely “bottom-up”, no higher level processing having influence on any lower level processing (Rummelhart, 1997). This process is also referred to as “data-driven”(BorrowNorman, 1975).2.2.2 Top-down ModelAbout 30 years ago, the psycholinguistic model of reading was introduced and practised in language reading classes. This was termed as hypothesis-test, knowledge based processing or “top-down” model, and Goodman (1967) described it as “psychological guessing game”. This model views reading as a lineal process in which readers use preexisting knowledge to interpret the text and create plausible expectations of what to read. Reading is perceived as chiefly “externally guided” and readers need not use all of the textual cues. For example, Anderson (1971) maintained that the background knowledge was much more important than the linguistic structure in the text. According to his view, skilled readers are those who are able to use their background knowledge to make predictions about the text and poor readers are those who are word-bound and unable to use context when they are reading. At that time the influence of this leading model was so strong that there has been a tendency to view it as the substitute for the bottom-up model.2.2.3 Interactive ModelMore recently, Rinehart (1997) proposed that the most efficient processing of reading is actually an interactive process involving both top-down and bottom-up processes working together interactively. The former ensures that the readers will be sensitive to some novel information that conflicts their hypotheses, and the latter helps the reader to select between possible interpretations or to resolve ambiguities. Skilled readers constantly shift between top-down and bottom-up processes according to the demands of the text they are reading. Less skilled readers tend to over rely either on top-down process, failing to pick up linguistic cues to confirm or on bottom-up process, failing to activate their background knowledge during reading. Carrel (1998) referred to over-reliance on bottom-up processing as “text-roundedness” and over-reliance on top-down process as “schema interference”.As is mentioned above, the more mental activities are involved, the more strategies are involved and the more efficient the comprehension is.2.3 Reading Strategies2.3.1 The Importance of Reading StrategiesLevine (2000:1) stated, “The ability to read academic texts is considered one of the most important skills that university students of English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) need to acquire.” Reading comprehension has come to be the “essence of reading” (Durkin, 1993), essential not only to academic learning in all subject areas but also to professional success and, indeed to lifelong learning. However, many students enter higher education underprepared for the reading demands that are placed upon them. One of the most important causes of students low reading ability is their low level of reading strategy knowledge. The students know little about reading strategies or how to use them. Therefore, it is necessary to provide students with a repertoire of strategies that promote comprehension monitoring and foster comprehension. As long as the students become motivated strategic strategy users, they can meet the reading needs within the 21st century.2.3.2 A Category of Reading StrategiesUrquhart and Weir (1998) classified reading strategies into met cognitive ones that “are more concerned with thinking about the reading experience itself” and cognitive ones that are “the more familiar mental processes that enable us to read”. Urquhart and Weirs categories of “some potentially useful met cognitive and cognitive strategies” are as follows:(1) Met cognitive strategiesPre-reading activities: previewing and prediction.While-reading strategies: self-questioning and self-monitoring.Post-reading strategies: evaluation and personal response.(2) Cognitive reading strategiesExpeditious reading strategies: skimming, search reading and scanning.Careful reading strategies include: Understanding a text: Separating explicitly stated main ideas from supporting details, making prepositional inferences, and making pragmatic inferences; Understanding lexis: Making lexical inferences which include: Resolving lexical ambiguity, predicting the meaning of unknown words and identifying pronominal references; Understanding syntax: Removing and paraphrasing.Urquhart and Weirs systematical classification is considered to be the most complete and comprehensive one, which distinguishes met cognitive and cognitive reading strategies and classifies the two groups into respective purposeful subdivisions. With this classification, it becomes clear and easy for readers to select the combination of strategies and skills to develop awareness or regulate consciously the use of appropriate strategies for achieving the interaction of bottom-up and top-down processing of the text and therefore achieving efficient reading.Chapter3 Barriers in English Reading3.1 Teachers Problems