College English Text Types And Reading Efficiency: A Correlation Study

For a long time, reading has been the most important subject in English teaching in China. The traditional College English reading teaching only focuses on grammar-translation, gives emphasis on the training of language skills so that it makes students'understanding of language structure limited to the understanding on the level of words and sentences, completely ignoring the understanding of the reading text itself, the overall teaching of discourse and the cultivation of students'reading ability, which lead to students'low reading efficiency. Previous studies on text type mainly relate text types with translation theories and translation strategies, or apply text types to writing and listening, but not to reading, there is no studies concerning the correlations between text type and reading efficiency. While there are many factors influencing reading comprehension, which can be mainly categorized from the perspective of reader factor, text factor and author factor; or from the perspective of linguistic factor and non-linguistic factor. Actually text type affects all the affecting factors in the above categorization, and different text types will lead to different psychology, affection and motivation, as well as different language factors and background culture of reading texts. And correlational studies on English reading efficiency are mainly from the perspective of reader factors such as reading anxiety and reading strategy etc, however, there is no study on the correlation between text types and reading efficiency. Thus, from the perspective of reading text types, the problem of reading efficiency is probed into and proved by using correlational study.The correlation between text types and reading efficiency is probed into by the methods of testing and correlational analysis, with the following purposes: (1) to explore the reading problems that English learners face in Chinese universities and colleges and the factors affecting English reading efficiency; (2) to investigate the correlations between text types and reading efficiency from the perspective of reading text; (3) to explore the reading strategies that can improve English learners'reading efficiency; and (4) to provide vocational college English teachers with some practical and helpful advice on teaching of English reading so that teachers and students can choose appropriate reading strategies according to different reading text types to improve students'reading efficiency and their interest of reading.This thesis, with discussion on the factors affecting English reading efficiency, analyses of text types and their classification and textual characteristics of the reading passages in four major College English textbook series and involvement of the roles of text types on reading efficiency, probes into the correlations between text types and reading efficiency on the basis of data and results analyses so as to get the findings and some implications.The research methods adopted by this research are literature review, statistical analysis, testing and correlational analysis. The first part will give a reminiscent account of the status que of College English reading efficiency, such concepts as text type, its current research state and developmental tendency both at home and abroad by means of analysis and induction. The second is a correlational and empirical study of correlations between text types and English reading efficiency, which has something to do with putting forward the research questions. At last, statistical method is used to analyze the results of the research.The result of data analysis indicate that there is a moderate negative correlation between different types of texts and reading efficiency. Generally, students achieve the best in narrative texts and the worst in argumentative texts and intermediate in expository texts. Participants of different English proficiency level achieve different degrees of reading efficiency to different text types. Participants of high English proficiency level perform considerably better than those of low English proficiency level in these three different types of texts. As to the participants of high English proficiency level, they behave similarly in the three different text types, especially in narrative text and argumentative text with the score of narrative text the highest, the score of expository text the lowest and the score of argumentative text the intermediate. However, for the participants of low English proficiency level, the mean scores to the three different text types are quite different with the score of narrative text the highest, the score of argumentative text the lowest and the score of expository text the intermediate.The research results present some pedagogical implications. Firstly, from the analyses of the text types in four major College English textbook series, it can be seen that the types and genres of the reading materials seem to be monotonous. So reading teaching material designers should provide as many types of texts as possible when selecting reading materials, so that students will be more interested in English reading. Secondly, teachers should adopt different teaching strategies according to different characteristics of different text types and teach students how to understand reading materials from the whole text as well as teach students language knowledge. Thirdly, students should strengthen their understanding of the characteristics of reading text types, enable themselves to adjust reading strategies in accordance with different text types of reading materials.