A Comparative Study On Reading Proficiency Standards Of Foreign Language

Foreign language reading competence is crucial for foreign language learners to acquire English successfully. The description about foreign language reading competence abroad mainly focuses on foreign language reading proficiency standards and there are few researches on foreign language reading proficiency standards in China.Firstly, this study reviews the literature on reading competence from perspective of reading comprehension process and the structure and components of reading competence. Then, it summarizes the related study on foreign language proficiency standard and foreign language reading proficiency standards. On the basis of that, it regards Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, American Council of the Teaching of Foreign Proficiency Guidelines, Canadian Language Benchmarks and China’s English Curriculum Standards as study objects and analyzes them to put forward suggestions to China’s construction of foreign languages reading proficiency standards.Through comparative analysis of text type, cognitive process and topic described in these foreign language reading proficiency standards, the research draws conclusion as follows:the diversification of text type and the repetition of same text type among different standards, but there are differences in dividing difficulty of text type among these standards. Meanwhile, the behavior verb is critical element in describing cognitive process. Besides, reading content and the difficulty of text can also reflect cognitive process. Though the detail level of describing cognitive process is different, readers’ low-level literal comprehension competence is emphasized. The frequency of occurrence of high-level reading comprehension ability is different. The description of topics among standards is from perspectives of listing concrete topics and setting ranges of topics. The level of topic content starts from familiar to unfamiliar, from concrete to abstract, from general to technical.In conclusion, it puts up forward the implications of constructing our country’s foreign language reading proficiency standards. The construction of the standard should combine with our country’s foreign language learning’s background and purposes, reflect the characteristics of our students foreign language learning and pay attention to text type, the level setting of cognitive process and description of topics.