A Study Of Factors Affecting English Reading Fluency Among Chinese College Students

Reading plays an important role in foreign language learning. Since the 1980s, English reading theory has developed rapidly and constantly. One of the most famous theories is the three models about the nature of reading process: bottom-up model, top-down model and interactive model. Changes in the understanding of the nature of reading process have brought about changes in all respects of EFL reading. More researchers begin to focus on improving students'reading comprehension and reading proficiency. However, reading fluency, one of the five reading skills, attracted scant attention and researches in this field were far from enough. The author of this thesis has observed that the development of Chinese college students'reading fluency is unsatisfying. Many problems still remain uncovered. Thus it is very important to know about the situation of their English reading fluency and find out the factors affecting their English reading fluency in the hope of providing some practical EFL reading instructions.Adopting qualitative and quantitative approaches, the present writer conducted the research among 240 second-year non-English majors at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology. In order to make the data more objective and convincing, three instruments were used in this research: a reading fluency test, a questionnaire and an interview, aiming at measuring their overall reading fluency level and identifying the factors affecting their English reading fluency. The reading fluency test was borrowed from Rasinski 2004, which covered the proficiency in decoding, the automaticity in decoding, and the prosodic reading. The questionnaire was self-designed according to the literature. It was a structured one consisting of 27 items in five aspects: word decoding, syntactic processing, connection making, strategy applying, and reading proficiency. All the items and alternatives were carefully designed and repeatedly revised. After the trial test, the questionnaire was delivered. Data collected through the reading fluency test and the questionnaire was put into SPSS 16.0 for statistical analysis. Then the situation of Chinese college students'English reading fluency was examined through one-sample T test, and the factors affecting their English reading fluency was analyzed by describing the statistics. To go with the results of the data analysis, a semi-structured group interview was held, in which the subjects were asked to answer 3 questions to probe into the causes of the participants'reading fluency problems. The interview was recorded, transcribed and summed up.The results of the reading fluency test showed that the general situation of Chinese college students'English reading fluency was unsatisfying. The results of the questionnaire showed that slow speed in syntactic processing and unemployment of strategies were the main factors affecting college students'English reading fluency. Failure in word decoding and connection making also decreased their fluency. Relatively, Chinese college students'reading proficiency was good enough and affected least among the five factors. The results of the interview indicated that students were unsatisfied with their English reading fluency situation and wanted to receive some training.Based on the results, it's suggested that during the process of English reading teaching, teachers should cultivate the awareness and build the ability of employing reading fluency strategies. And a systematic training to improve English reading fluency is necessary for college students.