| This thesis is a tentative endeavor to probe into the reading proficiency of the intermediate English majors at the School of Foreign Languages, Xiaogan University, trying to analyze main problems that affect their reading proficiency development, and to make some suggestions for the teaching and learning of English reading. To address that topic, the quantitative and qualitative approaches are employed as general framework for the research study.To start with, the thesis points out the important roles that reading plays both in life and work. It is regarded as the most efficient means to obtain information, especially in the modern age of information explosion. Efficient reading is what readers try to pursue since they cannot find more time to read. But efficient reading is difficult to most people even reading in their mother tongue. It is more so to Chinese students reading English as Foreign Language. Perhaps this is why it has been a hot topic among many practitioners and researchers. Since the 1980s, the theoretical development of English reading has made constant and rapid progress. The most famous is the three approaches about the nature of reading and reading process: bottom-up approach, top-down approach and interactive approach. Changes in the understanding of the nature of reading and reading process have brought out changes in all respects of the teaching of EFL reading. Research on English reading has been revitalized in recent years when more and more researchers have shifted their focuses from teaching to learning, from teachers to learners in terms of reading proficiency development. However, the current research of this kind is far from being enough, especially on reading proficiency of intermediate English majors. The author of this thesis has observed that the development of their reading proficiency in English is far from being satisfactory. Many problems still remain in then-English reading. Thus it is very important to find out about students' reading proficiency in the hope of providing improved L2 reading instruction.The first and foremost thing to do is to establish a clear understanding of reading proficiency by looking into the nature of reading and reading process and clarifying several related technical terms. This functions as a solid foundation of the whole research, without which all the observations, hypotheses, investigations and suggestions would be groundless.Adopting qualitative and quantitative approaches, the present writer conducted on the second-year English majors at the School of Foreign Languages, Xiaogan University. They are supposed to have reached the intermediate stage of English learning, have experienced a certain amount of English reading and have been informed of knowledge of reading. In order to make the data more objective and convincing, three instruments are included in this research: reading test paper, questionnaire and interview, aiming at measuring their overall reading proficiency level and identifying the problems in their reading. Reading test paper is made up of six texts chosen for analysis. Questionnaire is a self-designed structured one consisting of 30 questions, each of which is provided with all possible alternatives. All the questions and alternatives are carefully designed and repeatedly revised. The questionnaire is put into practice after an experimental test. Data collected through reading test paper and questionnaire is entered into SPSS 11 for statistical analysis. In connection with the results of the data analysis, a semi-structured group interview is prepared, consisting of 12 questions which aim to probe into the causes of the participants' reading problems. The interview is recorded and then turned into writing, summed up and sorted out.The final results of the research indicate that the hypotheses that have been made before the research have been confirmed to some extent. The reading proficiency of the respondents is not as high as expected and they are faced up with many problems in their English reading. Main problems can be grouped into four categories: linguistic problems, lack of background knowledge, poor reading habits and improper training of reading skills. The research also indicates that misunderstanding of the nature of reading process and wrong doing in classrooms do exist among students and teachers. This is the source of the reading problems and restricts the development of their reading proficiency.Then the four groups of problems are respectively elaborated on in terms of their strong relationships with and their influences on reading comprehension in theory and in practice, and the causes of these problems. According to Brown(1995), linguistic level process constitutes the main foundation of understanding. No one can read without basic linguistic knowledge, let alone to read efficiently. It has been noticed in daily teaching that in most cases, students who do not have a good basis of linguistic knowledge often feel confused and frustrated not only by unfamiliar words but also by the long and complex sentence structures. Data collected in this research provides support for this finding. Much evidence has shown that linguistic competence has a high correlation with reading comprehension. However, high linguistic competence does not necessarily mean high reading proficiency. On some occasions, readers' failure to understand a text is due to the lack of background knowledge, a well-organized knowledge system which readers have formed through years of worldly experience. Background knowledge can help readers overcome linguistic difficulties in the text. And it is well-documented that readers comprehend texts better when texts are culturally familiar or when they relate to well-developed disciplinary knowledge of a reader. Unfortunately, students under the survey show that they do not attach importance to background knowledge in reading comprehension, nor do they possess much related background knowledge.Efficient reading should be of accuracy and fluency, that is, one should read with adequate understanding and at appropriate speed. This research indicates that most of the students are slow readers and their slow speed is attributed to their poor reading habits such as regression, subvocalization and word-by-word reading. Some researchers claim that these habits are left over from early reading days when beginning readers were taught to pronounce letters and words. Some researchers suggest that a reader should learn to chunk a text into larger sense groups and try to take in each group with one fixation of the eyes. This can help him read more effectively and help him form good reading habits.In order to do the most efficient kind of reading, various reading skills and strategies need to be flexibly employed in reading. Flexible use of different reading skills is a sign of high reading proficiency. However, this research reports that students have problems both in the knowledge and in the flexible use of reading skills. It also reports that reading teachers should be responsible for the problems since they do not focus on reading skills training in class.In the light of the problems that have been discussed above, this thesis has drawn a number of implications for the teaching and learning of reading EFL. It is argued that both the teacher and students should take great efforts and share the responsibility for reading proficiency development. First, the teacher should launch a good beginning of reading course with serious consideration and full preparation, showing students what reai-life reading is like and what they should do in the coming reading lessons, helping them understand the goal and objectives of reading lessons. Then, the teacher should be able to select right materials to accomplish different purposes of reading lessons throughout the semester, considering the six factors that influence the choice of texts. Or he needs to make good use of the current textbooks to have students enjoy reading by creating stimulating purposes and activities. The third point is that the teacher should live up to the primary aim of reading lessons and focus on reading skills training throughout the whole teaching procedure including pre-reading stage, while-reading stage and post-reading stage. Since class time is always in short supply while the amount of reading is great, the teacher need take every effort to get students to enjoy extensive reading outside classrooms. There are three important things for the teacher to do for promoting extensive reading: inform students of the importance and necessity of extensive reading, choose proper reading materials and set motivating purposes and tasks, take effective measures to ensure their progress by giving feedback and offering guidance.As for the efforts on the part of students, one suggestion is that they should keep strengthening language input including building a large vocabulary and laying a solid grammar foundation. As for vocabulary building, they need to have a good command of a range of strategies for memorizing, understanding and using words. With regard to grammar learning, students should learn grammar as skill, not as knowledge and try to improve skills of analyzing grammatical structures in reading. For one thing, they must learn how to tackle long and complex sentences for better comprehension. Another suggestion is that they should take every opportunity to read English extensively for all-round development of reading proficiency. They have to realize that reading problems are better solved through reading.At last, this thesis points out its own limitations and deficiencies, expecting more research on reading proficiency of intermediate English majors to be made in a very close way to our own classroom teaching. Since students' mother tongue is Chinese not English, we have reasons to strengthen our own research on our own problems with the help of the western linguistic theories and teaching experience. |
