An Empirical Study On College English Reading Teaching From The Perspective Of Cultural Model

The study of English reading teaching has been under heated discussion by linguists and foreign language teachers. Reading ability occupies a prominent place in the development of linguistic competence, so higher requirements are put forward for college students'reading ability. The author observes that students often come across difficulties in doing the reading comprehension which contains much cultural background knowledge. Nowadays the quality of English reading teaching in many colleges is far from being satisfactory and, students find it difficult to improve their reading ability.The relevant theories view cultural model as cognitive model shared by people belonging to a social group and stress the uniting aspect of its being collectively shared by many people. Cultural model serves as the theoretical framework of this study to give explanations to the process of reading comprehension. Within this framework, the author provided some teaching suggestions on introducing cultural background knowledge in college English reading teaching.The research questions in this study are:1) What is the relationship between cultural model and English reading? 2) Can English reading teaching based on cultural model improve students'reading ability? 3) What principles for English reading teaching can be drawn in the perspective of cultural model?The author administered an empirical study on 84 students from Guangdong Ocean University Cunjin College. The experiment lasted for three months and different teaching methods were adopted in the experimental class and the control class respectively. The research instruments used in this study were questionnaire and test. First the author carried out the pre-test in the two classes in order to ensure Ihat they are at the same level of reading proficiency and the experimental class finished the pre-questionnaire. Then about twelve weeks were spent on the two classes in contrast teaching, the experimental class being given the teaching treatment which emphasized cultural background knowledge, while the control class receiving the regular teaching. At the end of the experiment, both of the two classes took the post-test and the experimental class finished the post-questionnaire. All the data was carefully collected and analyzed. The data analysis of the tests showed that the experimental class and the control class had obvious difference after the experiment, which proved that the teaching on the basis of cultural model could effectively improve students' reading ability.The findings in the research study suggest that reading ability depends on not only language ability but also the mastery of cultural background knowledge. Laying emphasis on cultural factors in reading teaching could indeed help students improve their reading ability. In the end some recommendations on college English reading teaching are proposed for further research.