An Investigation And Analysis Of Senior School Student’s English Reading Ability

Reading ability is a comprehensive ability. To learn English well, it is necessary toimprove English reading ability. How to improve students’ reading ability has been aheated issue for English teaching and learning in China. But in many senior middleschools, especially schools in rural areas, there are still many problems in Englishreading teaching. The way of English reading teaching is traditional and backward,and the students’ situation of English reading is not optimistic. So it is urgent to solvethe problem of how to improve students’ reading ability.This article takes students and teachers in Weishan No.1Middle School as theresearch object and investigates and analyzes English reading teaching and students’English reading ability through the way of questionnaire and interview. On the basisof investigation and research of the present situation of high school English readingteaching and the current situation of high school students’ English reading ability, thispaper aims at summarizing some success experience in teaching and finding outproblems existing in the reading teaching and learning to analyze the causes of thesephenomena, to discusses how to improve high school English reading teaching andhow to improve high school students’ English reading ability with the help ofthemselves and others.This thesis consists of five parts:Part one presents a general introduction, stating the purpose and significance ofthis study. Part two contains a review of literature which divided into two largesections: the first section introduces the basis of this research, mainly includingtheories of reading (definitions of reading, characteristics of reading, definitions andcomponents of reading ability and models of reading); The second section introducesthe research angle and innovation of this study through the consultation of researchliterature of high school English reading teaching and cultivation of reading ability ofhigh school students. There are four characteristics of high school English readingteaching research. First, the researches of high school English reading teaching aremainly based on the empirical survey and supplemented by theoretical studies; Second, most researches on high school English reading teaching point out the presentsituation first and then put forward the corresponding suggestion; Third, researchesbased on empirical approach mostly take the form of survey analysis, experimentalstudies and action research; Fourth, according to the present situation and problems ofhigh school English reading teaching, suggestions are put forward mainly for teachers.Research literature about the high school English reading ability training puts forwardcountermeasures mostly from the teachers’ level and is lack of specific study ofstudents reading ability. Only a few essays (such as “An Investigation into the PresentEnglish Reading Ability of the Senior High School Students in Qin’an County”,2004)investigate high school students’ English reading ability, but the investigation object islimited to a grade, sample range has limitations. In addition, the content of thequestionnaire survey is limited to high school students’ English reading strategies andEnglish reading obstacles. The author will respectively investigate high schoolstudents of three grades, survey content includes emotional attitude to English reading,reading habits, reading of the common problems, some difficulties in the reading,reading strategies, evaluation and improvement Suggestions to the teaching of reading,evaluation and Suggestions to the teaching material and plan and adjust, at the sametime, the research methods include interview, at last, the author will put forwardcorresponding countermeasures based on the results of the survey. The third part isthe research design, divided into five sections: The first section introduces researchquestions (1.What is the present situation of high school reading teaching?2. What isthe current situation of high school students’ reading ability?3. What are theproblems exist in the process of high school students’ English reading and reasonsthat causes problems?4. What are the measures to improve high school students’English reading ability?); the second section introduces the object of this study(students and teachers in Weishan No.1Middle School); the third section introducesresearch methods; the fourth section describes the research process; the fifth sectiondescribes the results and analysis of the survey. The fourth part puts forward somecountermeasures to improve high school students’ English reading ability according to the results of the survey. In the end, the fifth part is epilogue which brieflyintroduces the main contents and the limitation of this study.The followings are the three main conclusions of this thesis:1. The low level of high school students’ English reading ability is mainly causedby the current situation and existing problems of high school English reading teachingand students’ English reading.2. Factors that lead to the low level of high school students’ English readingability: the lack of vocabulary, weak grammar knowledge base, lack of reading skills,lack of discourse structure of knowledge, the lack of cultural background knowledgeof English, lack of interest in reading, bad English reading habits, students’ poorautonomous learning ability3. The thesis suggests countermeasures to improve high school English readingability in two aspects. First of all, improve high school English reading teaching:(1)Updating the teaching idea and optimizing English reading teaching class model.(2)Using the theory of multiple intelligence to develop students’ intelligence.(3)Reasonable and appropriate use of multimedia assisted teaching.(4) Guiding studentsto form independent reading ability. Secondly, improve high school students’ readingability:(1) Optimization high school students’ language strategies: pay attention toaccumulation of vocabulary, learning grammar skills and master grammar knowledge,train the ability of discourse analysis.(2)The strategy of optimizing students’non-language problems: stimulate reading motivation and cultivate interest in reading,strengthen the guidance of reading skills, develop good reading habits, pay attentionto the accumulation of students’ cultural background knowledge.