An Empirical Study On The CET-4Fast Reading Test

Reading is an important socio-cultural skill, which relates with human life and development. Giventhis importance, reading is always concerned by language scholars. It is one of the discussion focuses eitherin theoretical or practical debate. The extensive reading draws more attention than before in second languagelearning. It is not only one of the important language abilities which learners should master, but also the mainapproach by which learners get language input.In December2006, fast reading comprehension test has been appeared in the reformed CET-4andCET-6. The new part indicates that the extensive reading ability of English learners is being paid more andmore attention. As a new and developing test, relevant research regarding fast reading test is comparativelyfew. Moreover, Chinese English teachers or students have long been focusing on cultivating the ability ofintensive reading rather than extensive reading. However, many studies suggest that extensive reading play avital role in English learning. Christine Nuttall said,“The best way to learning a second language is toindulge in the language environment and read the language extensively”. At the meantime, some relatedliterature of L2revealed the correlations among the achievements of extensive reading, the backgroundknowledge of learners and reading speed.Firstly, to verify the validity of this part, the research analyzes the reading strategies students applyto in fast reading comprehension test, which is compared with the strategies tested by the fast reading part ofCET-4outline. Secondly, under this premise, the students’ pre-test data are analyzed and researcher’sopinion is proposed. Then, the researcher tries to tackle relevant problems in students’ test-taking process.Specifically, this research takes44freshmen of English major (Junior College) as researchsubjects and involves two experiments: pre-test which adopts two pieces fast reading papers of CET-4andpost-test. By interviewing students who have completed the experiments in order to verify its validity, theresearch tries to find the reading strategies students apply to in fast reading comprehension test and theirviews towards the fast reading part. Then, by analyzing the questionnaire and the scores of fast readingcomprehension test, the researcher proposes her opinion:(1) Lacking of activated prior knowledge makesthe failure of many students in fast reading comprehension test. They got low scores since this reason.(2) The testing time was thought to be insufficient. The reason is that students’ reading speed needs to beimproved.(3) Although “true/false questions” has more chance to guess right answer, it is still not welcomedby most of students. In recent years, the MCQ format had already instead of the T/F format. Third, on thebasis of the related theory of Neil J. Anderson’s reading strategies, the classroom activities are done toguide the students in activating schema and improving reading rate, so as to solve related problems.Post-test uses another fast reading test paper of CET-4. The result is compared with the relatively highscore result in pre-test.“Paired Samples T Test” is the statistical method of analyzing score results, whichshowed the significant difference. The scores in post-test are improved and problems get solved. Byinterviewing students, the researcher gets some understanding about the effect of related solution.The major findings of the study show that the fast reading of CET-4has validity. And theconscious application of the schema theory and relevant reading strategies that applied to theproblem-solving process of fast reading can help activate the students’ background knowledge andimproving reading rate, so as to improve their fast reading ability and scores. According to the researchconclusion, the research suggests teachers to adjust properly their teaching method of extensive reading andpay more attention on fast reading strategies.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter1is the introduction of the whole study, whichmainly introduces the research background, purpose, significance and research questions of the study.Chapter2briefly reviews the theoretical basis of this study, including the relevant theoretical foundationand some previous studies at home and abroad. Chapter3presents the research design of the study, whichconsists of the participants, methods and procedures in pre-test and post-test. Chapter4presents the majorresults and discussion about them. And some classroom activities are proposed in this chapter. Chapter5concludes this study with the major findings of the study, along with some pedagogical implications.