Application Of The Causal Model In English Reading Comprehension

The traditional English reading teaching aims at cultivation and accumulation of knowledge. Reading class was once called " vocabulary class " and its teaching centers on vocabulary and grammar. With implementing of the new curriculum standard, how to improve students' reading comprehension ability becomes more important.One of the main goals of learning a language is reading. For a long time, English reading research has been a much-discussed area. In the past, researchers focused on traditional reading process, schema theory, interactive theory and so on. But the researchers ignored the study about the causes of high and low reading achievement.The causal model by Carver explains the causes of high and low reading achievement. The causal model is based on rauding theory. Rauding is the process of comprehending sentences, or complete thoughts, during reading or auding. Rauding is what we call "fluency in reading". Rauding process contains three components —lexical access, semantic encoding and sentence integrating. When rauding process is involved, every reader, poor or good can manipulate the mechanism of comprehension, such as lexical accessing, semantic encoding.The main idea of the causal model can be stated as follows : due to different reading purposes, readers can employ five different processes (or five reading gears), which are Gear 1, memorizing; Gear 2, learning; Gear 3, rauding; Gear 4, skimming; Gear 5, scanning. Each of the gears involves different components. During the reading comprehension, different gear or process is used according to the difficulty of the materials.According to Carver and his causal model, rauding efficiency level has two direct causes. One is rauding accuracy level (Al ), the other one is rauding rate level (Rl ). The direct causes of high and low reading achievement are the individual's accuracy level and rauding rate level. However, the accuracy level is caused by the individual's verbal knowledge level and pronunciation knowledge level. The individual's rauding rate level is caused by his/her pronunciation level and cognitive speed level. And the individual's verbal knowledge level, pronunciation level and cognitive speed level are all influenced by his/her age, verbalaptitude, pronunciation aptitude and cognitive speed aptitude. Pronunciation level is the core of the causal model. El =VA1 Rl, Al =V?1 VI, Rl = >/p 1 Cs.The goal of the present study is to investigate the causes of high and low reading achievement when the rauding process is adopted and test whether the causal model is valid to the students or not who are at the beginning level of learning English as a foreign language.Eighty students of Junior Grade One in No. 3 middle school of Jinchang city are chosen as subjects in the study. Five tests on the causal elements are carried out among the subjects. Results were analyzed by means of quantitative methods. Evaluation of the tests, statistics, correlation of the test scores of the subjects were calculated.The major findings are as follows.1) Verbal level can be a cause of high and low accuracy level.2) Pronunciation level can be another factor that affects the accuracy level.3) Accuracy level is one direct cause of one's reading efficiency level.4) Reading rate level can be another necessary cause of high and low reading efficiency level.5) The causal model can be used to improve students' English reading comprehension .The findings suggest that the causal model is useful to the beginning learners in China whose foreign language is English and teachers need to plan to maximize the amount of gains in both verbal knowledge and pronunciation knowledge level which will help them to get accuracy level and reading rate level in order to improve reading comprehension.We had implications and suggestions for EFL reading class in Junior Grade One of NO. 3 Middle School of JinchnagCity.