Effect Studies Of Linguistic Factors On TOEFL Reading Comprehension Competence

With the advancement of internationalization and globalization,more and more domestic college students have chosen to study abroad after graduating from college.TOEFL has become a language test that most of these students undergo during the application process.Reading sub-test in the entire test takes a relatively large proportion,so improving reading comprehension competence is the key to good results.At present,only a few researches on TOEFL reading comprehension have been done at home and abroad,mainly on the comparative studies between TOEFL and other domestic English tests.However,there are few studies on TOEFL reading influencing factors.As a TOEFL reading teacher,the author finds that many college students have poor reading comprehension competence.The problem is mainly concentrated on the students' English basic competence.Many teachers pay much attention to reading skills and background knowledge in the teaching process,while ignoring the cultivation of English basic competence.The weak vocabulary competence and grammatical competence seriously hinder the improvement of reading comprehension competence.Therefore,the purpose of this thesis is to study the effects of vocabulary competence and grammatical competence on TOEFL reading comprehension competence,and put forward suggestions for TOEFL reading learning and teaching,in order to improve students' TOEFL reading comprehension competence.In this study,110 non-English major sophomores from SWJTU-Leeds Joint School with a background in engineering study were selected as the subjects.Their vocabulary competence,grammatical competence and TOEFL reading comprehension competence were tested in two stages separately.SPSS 19.0 was used for quantitative analysis.After the test,10 students with different TOEFL reading scores were interviewed.The results are as follows:1)The overall vocabulary competence,grammatical competence and TOEFL reading comprehension competence of sophomores of Sino-foreign joint school are all very poor,and there is a large gap between students.Specifically,students have small vocabulary size and are unable to correctly understand and creatively use grammar rules.In particular,students are rather weak in mastering regularity of complicated syntactic structures;2)The six variables of vocabulary and grammatical competence tests are all significantly correlated to TOEFL reading comprehension scores.Through multiple linear regression analysis,the three variables of vocabulary translation(vocabulary size),error correction,and Chinese-English translation are predictive towards TOEFL reading comprehension scores,which together can explain 84.6% variation in TOEFL reading comprehension;3)The effects of vocabulary competence and grammatical competence on learners of different reading levels are not the same.As for high level group,vocabulary translation(vocabulary size)and error correction have predictive power for TOEFL reading comprehension and together can explain the 65.2% variation in TOEFL reading comprehension scores.For low level group,test variables of vocabulary competence and grammatical competence have no predictive power for TOEFL reading comprehension competence.The above research results have certain guiding significance for the teaching of TOEFL reading and college English vocabulary and grammar teaching.TOEFL reading teachers should fully understand the overall vocabulary competence and grammatical competence of sophomores of Sino-foreign joint school,and pay more attention to the teaching of English basic knowledge.To be specific,in daily teaching process,English teachers should explore effective methods for students of different levels to improve their vocabulary and grammatical competence.For students with a high level of reading,teachers should help them improve the quality of vocabulary accumulation during reading process and strengthen the interpretation of long,complicated syntactic structures,focusing on teaching students how to quickly distinguish the major and minor components of these sentences.For students with low level of reading,it is imperative to strengthen their English basic skills.Teachers should use method like dictation to increase their vocabulary size,and strengthen the explanation and consolidation of basic grammar knowledge,so as to help students better analyze the syntactic structures and improve their reading comprehension competence.