Constructing Comprehension Frames In College English Reading

In the field of foreign language education, reading comprehension has been proven to be the most important among the five skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating. Therefore, for the learners of foreign languages, to enhance their reading comprehension is, to a great extent, to enhance their ability of using all the five skills in learning a foreign language. However, for many years, despite the fact that English teachers and non-English majors have devoted so much time and energy to enhancing reading comprehension ability, yet most students' reading competence, as documented in much recent literature in EFL teaching, is still below the expected level. Hence, it's urgent for college teachers that the traditional model of reading teaching should be improved.Based on the analysis of the present situation of college English reading teaching and learning, the author tries to explore a new model to offset this deficiency. Theoretically backed by Fillmore's "frame theory "and "constructivism", and also supported by "genre analysis approach" and "integrated approach", "constructing comprehension frames" is proposed as a new approach to reading teaching. This new approach, by integrating discourse knowledge of different levels, reading strategies, skills and methods, and the strategy of applying diagrams in reading, is intended to build a systematic and multi-dimensional reading model. The function of this model is not just to help readers accumulate reading experience or knowledge about discourse, neither merely to apply some strategies in reading, but to construct a psychological and cognitive frame, which helps the readers to structure information and experience and make active expectance of the following content at the same time.In order to prove the effect and influence of this new approach on students' reading competence, an experiment was carried out. In the contrasting class, traditional approach was used, while in the class of the subjects, the new approach was adopted. The result has indicated that the new approach to teaching reading is more effective than the traditional one. It contributed to enhancing the students' reading ability. Thus it is advisable that this new approach be applied in college reading course. Once readers obtain the ability of constructing accurate and complete comprehension frames in reading, not only their overall abilities in English but their abilities of learning how to learn effectively will rise to a new level.