A Survey On The Language Factors Influencing The English Reading Proficiency Of Senior Middle School Students

The present study intends to investigate the language factors that influence theEnglish reading proficiency of senior middle school students. By conducting asurvey in the form of questionnaire and interview, t his study aims at figuring outwhich factors are more influential among the language factors so as to offer teachersproper suggestions to improve students‘English reading proficiency.Both quantitative and qualitative methods were utilized in this research. Thequantitative data were obtained from a questionnaire responded by the515studentsin the two senior middle schools. Meanwhile, the interviews were carried out to getfurther information about the factors that influence the students‘reading proficiency.By analyzing the data collected from the questionnaire and carrying out theface-to-face interview, we get an overall impression on the current situation ofstudents‘English reading proficiency. The major findings are as follows:Firstly, discourse knowledge is the most important language factor of all thelanguage factors that influence the English reading proficiency of senior middleschool students. There are42.3%students who are for the viewpoint;Secondly,24.7%and21.7%students respectively chose vocabulary andgrammatical knowledge as their most important language factor that influence theirEnglish reading proficiency. Hence, there is no significant difference between thetwo factors in influencing the reading proficiency of senior middle school students.Based on the above results, the following three suggestions are put forward:1. It‘s quite important for the teachers to help the students to accumulate thediscourse knowledge in the everyday study. Once the students have accumulated alarge quantity of discourse knowledge, such as discourse markers, the way to findout topic sentences, and so on, the English reading proficiency of senior highstudents will be greatly improved.2. Besides memorizing the new words the students encounter while learning, itis quite necessary for the teachers to carry out some vocabulary strategy training toexpand the students‘vocabulary size.3. The grammar teaching and learning should be enhanced. Teachers shouldknow more about the needs of the students for grammatical knowledge, based onwhich the traditional grammar-translation teaching method should be improved.According to the findings above, much should be done to promote the students ‘ English reading proficiency. Not only the students themselves, but the teachers aswell as decision-makers need to take great effort in the future.Reading, as one of the basic English skills, has received plenty of attention bothat home and abroad, while most of the researches are about the college students.Therefore, more researches need to be done among senior middle school students.This thesis focuses on the language factors that influence the English readingproficiency of senior middle school students. More researches need to be done withother factors in the future.