| Reading is a most important skill in learning a foreign language. At present, traditionalEnglish reading comprehension teaching approach is still playing a major part in many middleschools in the country. Most of Level12English teachers always ask the students to readaloud in class, which is not a good habit. It will lead to students’ slow capturing of themeaning. A final cause of slow reading is forming the sounds of each word, even though thestudents might not speak them aloud. The average American speaks English at a rate of180to200words a minute. If the students read each word out aloud or in mind, it is impossible toread faster than this. In fact, the speed of200words a minute is usually far from enough indaily life. It is necessary for people to catch the elementary meaning of a passage quickly onsome special occasions. So, in a way, fluency is a necessary ladder for a beginner but it willcome, bit by bit, a lethal dose of poison for the students. Reading what they see whenever isabsolutely not a good habit. It is the responsibility for an English teacher to cultivate alearner’s good reading habit which will benefit him in the future.The paper firstly introduces the research on reading strategies and silent reading, and itthen analyzes the existing problems from aspects of psychology and cognition, and then givesdirectory tactics to help them improve their capacity of English reading comprehension. Itfocus on whether the silent reading can apparently improve students’ English readingcomprehension. What on earth is the difference between reading and silent reading? Why doStudents in Level12have to go on silent reading instead of reading aloud? This paper givesplenty of experimental dataIn this study the two classes,110students, from Level12of The Middle School Attachedto Hebei Normal University were selected as a comparison group. Class8is the control classwhich receives traditional reading comprehension teaching approach while Class7is theexperimental class which adopted silent reading approach. The experiment lasts for half ayear.The data was collected from English standard examination and questionnaire. Before theexperiment, the two classes have no clear difference in reading comprehension (according to test results).From the test results of the two classes, the conclusion is that silent reading is a moreefficient approach of improving the Level12students’ reading skill. Through silent readingthe students are allowed to think attentively in their attempts to make sense of what they read.Thus a number of strategies (e.g., previewing text, using headings and subheadings,re-reading, evaluating understanding, etc.) enable them to hold printed information quicklyand efficiently.Based on the study result, the paper gives some advice for the teachers as well asstudents of Level12on English reading training.1. Reading is an interactive activity in class and a relatively independent activity as well.Teachers should change traditional knowledge-centered reading teaching model and makereading teaching livelier.2. In Level12English class, silent reading should be made full use of and an Englishteacher should return the reading time to students themselves and had better not createso-called English environment through his babbling noise.3. A teacher should take a liberal attitude towards the students and train their adequatereading strategies and skills. The teacher is expected to encourage the students to keep apositive attitude, set a realistic goal and not concentrate their attention only on the exercisesand scores. |
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