Compensation Between Chinese Reading Ability And English Language Proficiency In English Reading

Reading is a kind of communication. It is an important source to acquire knowledge and get information. Therefore, reading is one of the most striking skills in language acquisition. With regard to the study in improving foreign language reading, researchers both abroad and home have been carrying on it from different perspectives. In 1980s, there was a new research trend in this field. Researchers focused on the relationship between foreign or second language reading and native language reading. In 1984, Alderson raised a question concerning such a relationship. The question is: Foreign language reading: a language problem or a reading problem? After reviewed different researches in literature, he drew a tentative conclusion—Foreign language reading, it is a language problem and at the same time, it is also a reading problem. From then on, many researchers have been conducting empirical studies testifying it from different languages background.There are two conflicting hypotheses as to the relationship between L1 reading and L2 reading. One is Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis; this hypothesis, simply expressed, states: Reading performance in a second language is largely shared with reading ability in a first language. This hypothesis posits that language operations such as reading and writing are transferable and intertwined; that is, second language skills are only superficially distinct and that at some fundamental core they are interdependent or is the same. The other is Linguist Threshold Hypothesis. This hypothesis, in its most rudimentary form, states: in order to read in a second language, a level of second language linguistic ability must first be achieved.To this two hypotheses, there are different studies to support them respectively. But in general, many researchers have the same result, that is: in foreign language reading, two hypotheses work simultaneously.In the current development of reading models, it would be rare to assert strict bottom-up or top-down models just because of their limitations. The majority of researchers both in L1 and L2 fields support interactive models of reading (e.g. Rumelhart, 1977; Carrel, 1988; Eskey, 1988). Interactive models have two different conceptions of interaction: (a) a general interaction between the reader and text; that is, the reader uses both textual information and his/her background information to comprehend the information in the text; and (b) an interaction of both bottom-up and top-down processing working together simultaneously in comprehending a text. It emphasizes both on high-skilled reasoning using schemata knowledge and less-skilled decoding ability in reading comprehension. In practical reading, these two skills compensate mutually. In 1980, Stanovich developed his interactive compensatory model in L2 reading. The model suggests the mutual influence of various components of reading exists, and if one component is weak, other reading processes work harder in order to for the weak one. Based on this, two research questions were addressed in the present study1. In foreign language reding, whether the low level of L2 language proficiency can be compensated by the higher L1 language reading ability.2. In foreign language reading, whether the low level of L1 reading ability can be compensated by the higher L2 language proficiency.70 Chinese university students who are non-English major were selected as the participants, after testing their Chinese reading ability, English language proficiency and English reading; they were divided into three levels according to the levels of their L1 reading ability and L2 language proficiency. Effects of these two variables on L2 reading were analyzed by analysis of variance. The results provided positive answers to both research questions.The paper consists of eight main parts. The first part mainly introduces the research question, methods and significance of the research, etc. The second part main reviewed the previous relevant studies. In the third part, the theoretical framework of the study and the theories involved in the study were introduced. The fourth part presents the design of the experiments in the study, including aims, hypotheses, subjects, instruments, and process. In the fifth part, the results of the experiments were analyzed. The sixth part reasoned and explored the results further. The seventh part investigated the implication of the study. In the last part, conclusion and limitation of the study were summarized briefly.