L2/FL Reading Comprehension And Teaching Strategies

Reading comprehension has always been receiving much attention in teaching and learning English and other foreign languages. Teachers have taken a lot of efforts to develop effective teaching methods and strategies, and have accomplished a lot of achievements. However, we can still find that many reading teachers mainly attributed the students' poor reading comprehension to linguistic deficiencies. In class, they devote much time and energy to the teaching of vocabulary and grammar. However, the result was often, although not always, disappointing.In fact, Reading is a meaning-making process involving an interaction between the reader and the text. Readers use mental activities in order to construct meaning from text. They do not read word for word, but rather use their background knowledge, and various strategies.Therefore, it is of great importance for the teachers of reading to advance their understanding of reading comprehension by realizing the mental process of reading comprehension and how prior knowledge can enhance a reader's interaction with the text, and to find some strategies for successful teaching of L2/FL reading.In this paper, we will examine the process of reading comprehension and the role of schema in reading comprehension, and we will focus on: 1. Psychological process of reading comprehension; 2. Schema theory and reading comprehension; 3. Strategies for the teaching of L2/FL reading comprehension.