Developing Vocational College Students' Reading Comprehension Through Inferential Strategy Training

Reading comprehension is very important, which is a central issue both theoretically and practically to language educators. But in English teaching at vocational colleges, English reading hasn't been given enough attention. Teachers are still using old reading teaching models and methods, neglecting the training of reading strategies and only emphasizing the importance of listening and speaking course. And this leads to the common phenomenon that most vocational college students' inferential reading comprehension is weak, which results in their poor reading comprehension. Therefore, the author thinks that it is of great importance and necessity to develop vocational college students' reading comprehension.Based on the study of such relevant Chinese and foreign theories and researches as reading theories, reading levels, reading models, reading strategies and inferential strategies, the author draws the following conclusion: inferential reading comprehension is important and necessary to the development of reading comprehension; inferential comprehension plays a core part in the process of reading comprehension. Since writers can't have all their ideas clearly stated, readers have to fill the "information gap" to get a clear understanding of the ideas implied. According to the above study, the author thinks that vocational college students' inferential comprehension should first be developed in order to improve their reading comprehension. Strategy training is an efficient way to the development of reading ability. As it is proved, strategy training is the important factor to successful foreign language learners.Therefore, the author firstly raised the hypothesis that inferential strategy training could help students improve their reading comprehension. Next the author chose 80 students from Xiangfan Technical & Vocational College as the subjects of the research through an experiment, whose process includes three stages: pre-experiment, Training and post-experiment. Before the training stage, both the experiment class and the control class were given the investigation and the pretest. Then the experiment class began to receive the successive 12-week inferential strategy training. After the training both the experiment class and the control class took the posttest and 15 of the experimental class were interviewed one by one. Lastly, based on the analysis of the data of the investigation, the two reading tests and the interview, the author comes to the following conclusion: 1. the hypothesis is confirmed that vocational college students' reading comprehension can be improved through training inferential reading strategy. 2. As the quantity and quality analysis on the experiment also prove, the research is reliable, workable, and effective, which can be applied to vocational college reading teaching. 3. Major findings are involved about English reading teaching, English reading learning, reading materials and the means of English reading test. The research is also useful for the other courses, such as listening course, speaking course and writing course.