A Study On Problems Related To English Reading Of Students In Secondary Vocational Schools And Countermeasures

Reading,as a comprehensive ability,plays an important activity in the process of English learning.For most English learners in China,reading is the most important means of English leaning.Reading competence of learners has direct impact on their ability of information acquisition and communication with others.However,it is not optimistic for many secondary vocational school students in terms of their reading.For a considerable number of students,they do not make progress or even decline in their English reading after several years study.For some of them,it is even difficult to meet the requirements of secondary vocational school curriculum standards.The subjects of this study include 220 students and 6 teachers from such three secondary vocational schools as Qingdao Foreign Affairs Service Vocational School,Qingdao Tourism School,and Pingdu Vocational Educational Center.The research instruments include questionnaire and interview.The two research questions in this study are as follows:1.What are the prominent problems related to English reading for students of secondary vocational schools?2.What measures should be taken to solve these problems in English teaching so as to improve students' reading competence and ability?Major findings are summarized as follows:The major problems related to English reading for students of secondary vocational schools includes the following.(1)Lack of interest and motivation In general,students in secondary vocational schools do not have enough interest and motivation for English reading,and most of them do not develop a good habit of reading in English,and the time spent on reading is not enough.(2)Monotonous reading material and inadequate reading resource For most of students,their reading is confined to textbooks,and extra-curricular reading material is inadequate.Moreover,students prefer stories of English magazines,and they choose these stories for their reading because they are interesting.(3)Lack of English reading strategy Firstly,lack of vocabulary strategies.Most students emphasize too much on the understanding of individual words,instead of taking the structure of sentence or passage into consideration.Secondly,too much reliance on dictionaries.Students usually prefer to consult the dictionary when they come across a new word,which decrease the efficiency and speed of reading.Two much reliance on dictionary will seriously affect the speed of reading.Thirdly,inappropriate use of rereading strategy.Fourthly,inadequate understanding of sentence structure and grammar.Fifthly,lack of topic prediction strategy.(4)Undiversified and Outdated teaching methods In the process of English reading teaching,for some teachers,they do not adopt diversified teaching methods,and they even believe that teaching reading is to teach words,and accumulation of word meaning is reading and understanding.They think that English reading ability is evaluated by multiple choices.The misunderstanding of English reading teaching and English reading ability has led to some opportunities for teachers and students to seek instant success,and they simply think that they can improve their English reading ability by the textbooks and more reading comprehension excises.To solve these reading related problems,the writer puts forward some suggestions for English teachers in secondary vocational school.(1)In accordance with features of English specialized for secondary vocational schools,both the teachers and students are expected to practice the idea of experiential reading,in which language learning and specialty study are melted,and each can benefit from the other.(2)Multimode motivation should be adopted to stimulate student's reading interest.(3)Teacher should help students select enough appropriate extracurricular reading materials.(4)Teachers are supposed to train students' reading skills and improve their reading ability.(5)Teachers should keep learning advanced teaching ideas and adopt modern teaching methods,and pay attention to the students' learning process,and provide timely evaluation and feedback for students' reading performances after the implementation of reading teaching.