云麗

【Abstract】This paper carries on a series of ways to read bout how to improve English reading ability. The paper first explains some problems in reading and then ways of solving.

【Key words】English reading;problems of reading;ways of solving

Reading is a complicated activity of thinking. “In the process of psychological language, readers experienced five stages: sampling, predicting, tasting, confirming and revising.” (Liu bin, 1998). Because of the complication, there are a lot of problems. However, some problems affect reading speed. How can readers solve the problems? In the following sections, some appropriate ways or skills are discussed.

1. Cultural background in reading

(1) Cultural problems.Each language is the vehicle of a culture; its usage and development are restricted and affected by specific cultural background. That is to say, readers must learn about a nations history, customs, and religions. Cultural background is different in Chinese and English. First, vocabulary contains specific cultural information. E.g. when someone says, “You are a lucky dog”, dont be angry, because “dog” is a pet that people like best in western countries. So this sentence means “You are a lucky person”. If you dont know the knowledge beyond the lines, maybe you will think youre abused. Second, there are many idioms in English. These idioms are some expressions commonly accepted in practice through many years. E.g. An eye for an eye.(以牙還牙)Like father like son. (有其父必有其子) If we interpret these words too literally, it may become a laughing stock.

(2)Ways to learn about culture.First, we should look up the words and expressions in a dictionary in time if we are not clear about their meanings, and we also collect as many idioms as possible while reading. Second, readers should need the knowledge of background-non-linguistic knowledge including the knowledge of history, society, religions, and values.

Rich knowledge of background is necessary to improve reading ability. In fact, learning English is the process of adapting to the western culture. So readers should learn and analyze the background consciously in study and make a contrast with the native culture to get a deeper understanding. Of course, there is no good or bad culture. To be familiar with western culture does not mean to be completely westernized. On the contrary, the aim is to learn English better.

2. Vocabulary in reading

“A word is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound and meaning syntactic function” (Zhang Weiyou, 1997) Among the three elements of language –speech sound, grammar and lexis, lexis is the first because it is the basic of language. From the above we can conclude vocabulary takes an outstanding place in the language study.

(1) Problems in vocabulary.However, in China, most students feel the biggest problem of all is vocabulary, because the vocabulary they master is simply not big enough for reading. As we all know, English is one of the most highly developed language in the world, it has a large vocabulary, and the present estimate of the present-day English vocabulary is over one million. How do learners deal with vocabulary in reading?

(2) Some ways or skills

① To enlarge the vocabulary.English isnt our mother tongue, so learners can master some key words that appear frequently. In the process of accumulation, we should distinguish which are key words, then try to master these words. The famous English linguist Quirk divided the words into two kinds: open class and closed class. Open class includes nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. This kind of words has many meanings in which some meanings are also added or abandoned. Closed class includes prepositions, pronouns and conjunctions. This kind of words is fixed and has limited meaning. So what we need to do is to read more from the text-books, magazines or other reading materials to master basic meaning of words.

② To guess the meaning of new words.However, we meet new words at any time no matter how large our vocabulary is. The common way to solve this problem is to look the words up in the dictionary, but it can affect reading speed. If we can guess the meaning of new words, it will improve our reading speed largely. The following techniques will be helpful:

First, morphological clue

From the angle of semantic meaning, a word is not the smallest language unit. It can also be divided into smaller unit—morpheme that includes 3 types: stem, prefix and suffix. Knowledge of Morphology is extremely useful to help us to guess the meaning of new words. Readers first analyze the structure of unknown words. That is, find out stem, prefix or suffix. According to the knowledge of English affixes, prefixes only change the words meaning not its part of speech. E.g. un+happy→unhappy. These two words are opposite in meaning, but have the same part of speech. Suffixes, which are attached behind the stem, mainly change part of speech. E.g. depend +able→dependable. “depend” is a verb, but dependable is an adjective. The part of speech is changed. In addition, we also know the meaning of a prefix or suffix. E.g. the prefixes “anti-,pre-,tele-,” mean “against, before, far” and the suffixes “-er,-ish,-less” mean “person, like, without”.

Second, context

The meaning of unknown words can also be fixed by examining its contextual environment. We can infer synonymous relationship by apposition, attributive clause and punctuation.

E.g. Shopping centers or malls, started as a collecting of small new stores away from congested city centers.

In this sentence, “mall” is an unknown word, but you can infer “mall” is another expression of “shopping center”, according to the conjunction “or”. There are some other words or phases such as similarly, likewise, in other words. Another sentence is:

The little boy enjoys all kinds of beverages: water, milk, cola, coffee, juice and tea.

In this sentence, there is a cola. It shows the content behind the cola is the explanation to “beverages”. Thus, we can infer “beverages” may mean “drinks”.

In sum, learning to guess meaning may enlarge vocabulary and strengthen confidence in reading.

3. Grammar

(1)Grammars function.Its clear that reading cannot be separated from vocabulary. However, sometimes learners cant comprehend the sentence structure correctly, because there are a great number of complex sentences. E.g. Look at this sentence:

The president said at a press conference dominated by questions on yesterdays election results that he could not explain why the Republication had suffered such a widespread defeat, which in the end would deprive the republican party of long-hold superiority in the House.

This sentence includes a main clause with a participial phrase, two objective clauses and a non-restricted attributive clause. Without the knowledge of grammar, we also cant read fast. How could you deal with complex sentences?

(2)Ways to deal with grammar.The way that youve learned to use grammar is to analyze sentences, especially those particular ones such as inverted word order, relative clause, and adverbial clause. While analyzing sentences, the most important thing is to find out “the trunk”, and then straighten out “branches”. The knowledge of language structure can help learners clear away obstacles in reading. A successful reader should have a rather good command of grammar.

4. Text

(1)An overall view in text reading.Reading is an activity of communication between the writer and readers. The writer expresses his overall idea through the combination of words, paragraphs, while working out the writing. However, some readers only pay attention to each word and sentence, they dont grasp the general idea. That is, they cant see the wood for the trees, which is also called “garble a statement”. So, readers should read articles or books from an overall angle, based on the whole text.

(2)Two special skills in extensive reading.Extensive reading is very important in English study and we can improve our reading ability by it. So, it requires us to master some fast reading skills, among which scanning and skimming are very important.

Scanning

Scanning is the fastest way of reading in terms of the lines of a passage we read per minute. It is a highly selective and lavational procedure-an effective approach to a thorough understanding of content. The function of scanning is to locate specific bits of information facts, dates, numbers, names, etc. in a passage to quickly find an answer to a specific question.

Skimming

Skimming is a mixed reading technique┄a combination of scanning and rapid reading. Your normal reading speed is 150 wpm-200 wpm, while skimming speed is 300 wpm-400 wpm. Skimming is used to identify and understand certain key ideas of a passage or to get a general feeling of its writing style. Its use in such combinations is to locate segments of the passage that require thorough reading and understanding. For instance, we may skim a newspaper to get some important information.

(3)Ways to comprehend the whole text

①To find the topic sentence.Topic idea is a thread of the whole text. Sometimes, it is stated in the form of a topic sentence, so we can see the logic of the article by finding the topic sentence. So, its a very important skill to grasp the main idea accurately. Many topic sentences appear at the beginning of a paragraph. However, some topic sentences may also appear in other places such as end position or middle position. Sometimes, the writer may also hint the topic idea rather than state it publicly. This topic idea will be an idea to which most, if not all, of the sentences in the paragraph relate, or it may be a combination of two ideas or an idea that summarizes an argument offered in the paragraph. In that case, our job is to infer or deduce the main idea implied by the writer. That is, we need to identify the common topic and pay close attention to the context of a paragraph.

②To grasp the writers opinion.To understand the content of the texts in an all-round way, readers also need to grasp the writers opinion, attitude and inclination. However, theyre not expressed directly in the text. So judgment and inference are demanded. First, pay attention to the sentences that are written to evaluate and comment characters and incident. Sometimes, the writers state opinions directly, but sometimes they dont. So readers can find the implied opinions from a sentence, a paragraph, and a text only by reading carefully. Second, pay attention to the words and phases that express subjective wishes. Sometimes the writers usually use some words with emotional coloring to express their different attitude to certain questions. So readers should especially think over these words characteristic to infer the writers inclination and emotions.

Though there are many ways or skills that can improve reading ability, readers should select appropriate ways and materials to read step by step. Its not desirable to give up half way, because only when you read a lot, can you study English very well. In sum, the more you read and accumulate, the more you gain.

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