On Correlation Between Chinese Reading Ability And EFL Reading Ability--A Case Study

The relationship between NL reading ability and FL/SL reading ability is an important matter in the field of SLA and FLT. Although some studies of this question have been carried out, none of them could explain this question in Chinese context. Moreover, none of them have defined definitely the concept of "reading ability".The present paper, at first, tries to provide a clear picture of "reading ability" through the explanation and discussion of reading and reading processes. The author defines "reading ability" as the ability of the reader to adjust and use reading skills/strategies according to different reading purposes, so as to efficiently recognize, comprehend and/or elaborate written texts. This kind of ability could be analyzed into three elements: linguistic knowledge, schematic knowledge, readingskills/strategies.Based on this definition, the author constructs one Chinese reading test, one English reading test and one Chinese questionnaire for Chinese senior 1 students. The subjects come from three middle schools in the city of Changsha. The results indicates: (1)for Chinese senior 1 students, their Chinese reading ability and EFL reading ability are not significantly correlated; (2)there is no significant correlation between their Chinese genre-based reading ability and EFL genre-based reading ability; (3)for Chinese senior 1 students, there is no significant gender difference in reading ability.The present paper attributes the non-linear relationship to the senior 1 students' poor Chinese reading ability and the linguistic threshold that holds back the possible transference.Finally, the present paper suggests that EFL teachers impose equal emphasis upon linguistic knowledge and reading skills/strategies in their class and train students out of class with abundant authentic Chinese texts so as to improve students' EFL reading ability.