The Effect Of Phonological Processing Ability On College English Reading

In foreign language learning, reading is a very important basic skill. College English teaching plan sets higher and higher standards for students' reading comprehension. English reading comprehension has become the main factor of college English comprehensive quality. Meanwhile, it's also a great difficulty to foreign language learners. Most researches on improving reading comprehension focus on reading strategies, interactive approach to reading and so on, while researches from the aspect of phonological processing ability (i.e., phonological awareness, verbal working memory and rapid naming) are very few. Although in recent years, researches on the relationship between phonological awareness and reading have attracted much more attention, the studies on verbal working memory and rapid naming are rare. The aim of this research is to investigate the effect of phonological processing ability on college English reading.The participants selected were 59 non-English majors from Shandong University of Science and Technology. Their English reading comprehension and phonological processing ability were assessed in the experiment. Then they were grouped into three levels according to their reading scores. Qualitative and quantitative research instruments were employed to examine the differences in phonological processing ability scores among the three groups, measure the correlation between phonological processing ability and reading comprehension, examine the relationships among the three elements of phonological processing ability, and to investigate which of the phonological processing ability variables, singly or in combination, predicted English reading comprehension. The study ended with the following conclusions:1) PA positively correlated with ERC significantly. RN negatively correlated with ERC significantly. There were obvious correlations among the three elements of PPA. 2) To some extent, PA and RN both contributed much to the variance in students' CET band 4 reading achievements. They were very good predictors of college English reading.3) VWM didn't correlate with ERC obviously.This research showed, in phonological processing ability, phonological awareness and rapid naming had some significance to college English reading. This thesis provides some reference for the improvement of college English reading and the progress of reading teaching method. Therefore, this research may be of some value in English reading teaching study of our country.