A Study Of The Effects Of Text Difficulty On Reading Comprehension In Higher Vocational School

English, as a public compulsory in higher vocational colleges. Reading is vital in English teaching of higher vocational colleges. According to the requirements of New English Curriculum Criteria in Higher Vocational Colleges, it makes A-level and B-level reading standard. But currently, reading comprehension ability of students in higher vocational school is universally low. And in practical reading teaching, teachers often ignore the text factors of influence students reading comprehension. In recent years, Researchers at home and abroad investigate various factors that can affect English reading by text simplification. At the same time, researches depend on readability formula are increasing. But how to study the different effects of text difficulty on reading comprehension by combining text simplification and readability, especially that of higher vocational colleges reading is relatively insufficient.This research is based on the study of Second Language Acquired theory and Gagne’s learning hierarchy theory. This text was simplified through three ways:simplified lexically, syntactically, and both lexically and syntactically. The participants of this research consisted of sophomores and juniors not majoring in English from 4 natural classes. The difficulty of four version texts was tested by Flesch readability.The study will combine it with questionnaires in order to explore these questions:How does different difficulty of text influence on their reading comprehension; which types of simplification are better at promoting higher levels of their reading comprehension; whether Flesch readability test the difficulty of text from students’ point of view. In other words, this study is important to the teacher who wish to select appropriate reading materials for learners at a variety of ability levels. It is also critical to promote English teaching.The experimental statistic was collected and analyzed by the software SPSS17.0. The study results showed that (1)In general, different difficulty of text will make different influence on students;appropriate reducing the text difficulty can have a positive influence on reading comprehension; (2)Change the difficulty of text by the lexical simplification and both lexical and syntactic simplification, this way can are helpful for reading comprehension while syntactic simplification slightly hinders the reading comprehension; (3)The readability of text and the difficulty of text have a certain relationship. And Flesch readability can as a reference feature of text, and lexical will influence the vocational college students on their subjective judgments of text difficulty.In conclusion, the results of experiment suggest that text simplification can be helpful for students reading comprehension, and lexical simplification is the better way. Based on the results of the research on text simplification and readability, the author gives some suggestions on reading teaching by reading text simplification, choosing language learning materials and optimizing teaching methods. And Flesch readability formula as a standard of measuring teaching materials. Teachers can select suitable and typical teaching materials and content of course for students in reading class, they can be encouraged to read widely. It can enhance the classroom instruction efficiency and assist the English teaching. Although some limitations still exist in this study, as one of the ways of teaching pattern and teaching approaches. The study results can be populated and applied, which is believed to have great potential for foreign language learning and teaching in the future.