An Analysis Of Senior High School Learners' Performance In English Reading Comprehension Tasks

Reading in Senior High School English Curriculum Standards(2018)provides clear and concrete demands,requiring learners to gain the information,views,emotions and attitudes conveyed in the discourse.The score of English reading comprehension is 40 points in the College Entrance Examination,about 27% of the total score,therefore,reading comprehension occupies an essential position in English teaching in senior high school.English teachers in senior high school need to cultivate learners' reading ability in teaching,which requires teachers to know the current situation of learners' performance and typical errors in reading comprehension.Previous research about English reading comprehension's teaching in senior high schools pays attention to guidance of reading methods and effective strategies.There are relatively little investigation and research about the current situation of how senior high school learners fulfilling the tasks of English reading comprehension in the exams.Based on Error Analysis and Schema Theory,this study tries to find out the errors existing in senior high school learners' reading comprehension tasks and to analyze the causes for these errors.There are two research questions:(1)What are the main types of errors in the senior high school learners' performance in reading comprehension tasks?(2)What are the factors that influence the learners in answering reading comprehension questions? The concrete research procure was as follows: first,in September,2017,we collected data of reading comprehension tasks from the first entrance examination by 118 learners of three classes in Senior Grade Three,Zhengzhou No.1 Middle School.We then detected,located,described and classified errors in learners' answers to the tasks.Second,the author distributed the questionnaire to the learners in October,2017,which intended to find out the types of errors the learners encounter in the process of answering reading comprehension,and to analyze the causes for these errors.Third,in November,2017,five learners with high score and five learners with low score in two classes were interviewed in order to find out the difference in performance of the reading comprehension tasks by upper learners and underachievers.The results show that:(1)The main error types learners commit in reading comprehension tasks are inferring,guessing and summarizing the main idea.(2)The factors influencing learners' performance are,according to their influence degree,vocabulary,reading strategies,language sense and background knowledge.Vocabulary is found to be a core factor affecting learners' performance in answering reading comprehension questions.In addition,the results also imply that the learners with high score in reading comprehension tasks tend to commit errors in the guessing type;and that the learners with low score the inferring type.They adopt different learning strategies about vocabulary,and different learning initiatives.The implications of this study for English teaching in senior high school are: reasonable and effective teaching designs should be made for the error-prone types of inferring and guessing;and targeted explanations should be made for vocabulary and reading strategies that affect the performance of reading comprehension.