An Empirical Study On The Correlation Between Chinese And English Reading Speed, English Language Proficiency And English Reading Comprehension

The factors that affect reading include language factors and non-language factors. Language factors relate to reading material, including the lexical items used, syntax, topic, etc.. Non-language factors include reader factors and situational factors. Reader factors refer to a reader's motivation and interest in reading, his intelligence and language proficiency, prior knowledge, etc.. Situational factors refer to the social and physical situation of a reading activity. According to the Interactive Model of reading, reading is the process in which all these factors interact with each other.This paper is a study on the correlation between Chinese and English reading speed, English language proficiency and English reading comprehension. While researchers have different opinions on how much language proficiency affects FL or SL reading, their findings indicate that basic language competence is involved in reading comprehension and FL proficiency ceiling may restrict the degree to which good reading skills are applied to FL reading. Reading skills play an important role in reading. In this point, the researchers are interested in whether the NL reading abilities that a SL or FL reader has already possessed will transfer to his SL or FL reading. One point that has been agreed on is there is a certain tendency to transfer from NL to SL or FL reading (Block, 1986; Carson et al., 1990). Perkins et al. (1989) find that there is a significant correlation between NL and FL reading comprehension. Wang Churning et al. (1992:73) consider that it is necessary to research into each component of reading, and even comprehension may be further divided to reveal the secret of high-level comprehension. Researches done abroad are mainly SL studies. Therefore, the result may not be suitable for Chinese FL learners. The researchers at home mostly take English majors as their subjects. Moreover, in their experiments, questions to test reading comprehension vary in difficulty-there are simple fact-finding ones as well as demanding high- level ones. This writer thinks that comprehension questions different in difficulty require different cognitive ability and language proficiency from readers. Therefore, it is necessary to deal with them respectively.This experiment is based on the research work done by Perkins et al. (1989) and Wang Churning et al. (1992), but it goes further. It uses non-English major college students as subjects, and takes such factors of subjects' as variables: language proficiency, reading speed, and the ability to make inference standing for reading comprehension, and it controls such variables as background knowledge, motivation and sense of participation. Data of the items are analyzed by Pearson correlation procedure in SPSS software to gain the overall correlation matrix. Then, they are respectively put in order to get four highest groups and four lowest groups for further investigation into the changes of their correlation. The writer gives her analysis on the indication of these data. The result shows that in general, there exists a tendency to transfer of Chinese to English in reading speed (r=.56**); but the transfer of reading speed shows difference by degrees on different levels of English language proficiency, Chinese and English reading speed and English reading comprehension; English language proficiency plays an important role in English reading, but when involved reading comprehension on high level, language proficiency is insufficient, as it requires reading skills simultaneously, therefore, reading in English is a problem of both language proficiency and reading skills.Based on the study of FL proficiency and FL reading, the writer thinks that large amount of exposure to written material is an approach to improve both the language proficiency and reading ability. Since there is a tendency to transfer of Chinese to English in reading speed, it is suggested that FL learners with slow reading speed improve their foreign language reading speed through correcting their poor native language reading habits. As the study indicates that English reading comprehension on high level requires both English language proficiency and reading skills, it is suggested that college English teachers should foster students' reading skills as well as foreign language proficiency.This paper is made up of seven chapters:Chapter One is the introduction to the objective of the study.Chapter Two is concerned with the survey on models of the reading process.Chapter Three is concerned with L2 reading is a problem of both language proficiency and reading skills.Chapter Four is a survey on transfer theory.Chapter Five is the experiment.Chapter Six is the analysis of the data.Chapter Seven is the conclusion of this study and its defects and suggestions for further research.