Research On Memory And English Reading Comprehension Of Chinese College Students

The primary purpose of this dissertation is to research on the memory and English reading comprehension of Chinese college students,and to analyze the impact of five English textual patterns on memory and reading comprehension from both the theoretical and experimental perspectives. In addition,impacts on reading and comprehension by four essential factors associated with memory and forgetting are investigated and evaluated. In conclusion,the implications of this research are summarized to suggest more effective strategies for English Language teaching.In Chapter two,the basic theories of memory are introduced. Based on the earlier and current studies and achievements,four significant factors influencing the memory and forgetting are brought out and evaluated,which includes time,character of the material,quantity of the material and input mode.At the same time,five common English textual patterns are specialized with the detailed explanation and examples,which refer to Problem-solution pattern,Claim-counterclaim pattern,Narrative pattern,Question-answer pattern and General-specific pattern. The primary focus of the experiments is to investigate the impacts of these five textual patterns on memory and the ability to comprehend English texts.In order to study the relationship and interaction between the memory of Chinese college students and their capabilities of English reading comprehension,some college students in Chongqing University are taken as the experiment subjects in the research. Moreover,the subjects are divided into three testing groups with the different English levels in accordance with their results of Chinese College English Test-Band 3,Band 4 and Band 6. hi terms of the theoretical explanation,two major experiments are designed and executed to establish the interaction of English textual patterns and memory and to test the impacts of these four factors influencing the memory and forgetting on English reading comprehension. The first experiment focuses on the relationship of five common textual patterns to the memory of the Chinese college students with different English levels. The second experiment investigates the impact of each associated factor influencing the memory and forgetting on the actual memory of college students and their abilities to comprehend.Some significant results are drawn from the experiments with comprehensive statistical analysis by using SPSS.1. The students who have passed Chinese College English Test -Band 6 demonstrate the best performance on memorizing and English reading comprehension. The students who have passed Chinese College English Test-Band 3 show the poorest memory and English reading comprehension. The bi-directional hypothesis -as to college students in China,competence in reading comprehension and the ability to memorize text are interdependent;that is,the ability to memorize text is in direct proportion to competence in reading comprehension - can be proved to be true.2. In the respect of five different textual patterns,it is the texts with General-specific pattern that most of the Chinese college students with different English levels feel frustrated to read and comprehend to a great extent. On the contrary,it is easy for most of the Chinese college students with different English levels to get through the texts with Narrative pattern due to their overexposure in literary works.3. As for the impact of time on memorizing,we find that the Chinese college students would improve the competence in memorizing and English reading comprehension if they are given intensified and repetitive training at the very beginning of reading and studying.4. As for the impact of input mode on memorizing,we find that it is helpful and useful for the college students to improve their abilities to memorize and comprehend the texts by the way of classifying the whole reading materials into several groups according to the theory of English textual pattern and providing the specific explanation and guidance on the characteristics of each textual...