Research On English Reading Ability Of Senior Students

Improving students' English reading ability is an important task of English teaching, as English reading ability occupies a significant part in their English competence. In the field of foreign languge teaching, it is usually believed that the process of reading is affected by many factors, such as personal experiences, subjective attitude, emotion and so on. This study intends to investigate individual differences in reading, the reasons behind them and what teachers should do in coping with these differences to make teaching of English reading more efficient and thus enhance the level of students' reading ability. For many years, scholars have made many deep studies in the field of teaching of foreign language reading and individual differences. However, most of these studies are conducted among many students and seldom focus on individuals. As a teacher, to find the differences between successful English readers and unsuccessful ones, I studied some typical cases by testing, questkmaires, classroom observing, talking and individual analysing. The main findings are as follows :1) Successful English readers are more interested in English reading than unsuccessful English readers.2)Successful English readers have higher motivition.3) Successful English readers have more scientific learning concept, better reading habits and they can use reading strategies more properly.4) Successful English readers have higher self-expectation and are more hard-working. They are more active and attentive in class and show greater determination and perseverance in their after-class reading activities.5)Compared with unsuccessful English readers, successful English readers are better at accepting teachers' positive influece and adapting to changes of learning environment.6) More interest and reading of mother tongue has positive connection with better English reading ability.7) Successful English readers are more confident and believe they have more positive factors in learning English than unsuccessful English readers.The former have higher level of self-learning ability as well.8)No clear evidence shows senior high school students' disposition, learningstyle, family and parents have a great effect on their English reading ability.