A Study Of The Development Of The Non-English Major Undergraduates’ English Reading Ability

As an international language, the importance of English is almost self-evident. Reading is an important way of learning English, and plays a vital role in the improvement of English level. However, most non-English major undergraduates in China are not good at English reading. For example, reading comprehension accounts for40%of the whole CET paper, but according to official statistics, students always lose a great many points in this section, which reflects the weakness of students’reading ability. Therefore, the development of college students’ English reading ability is particularly important. In view of the importance of reading, this paper puts focus on how to develop college students’English reading ability.Considering the main problems existing in college students’English reading, the training program to promote students’English reading ability is put forward based on the relevant reading theories. This program explores how to enlarge students’ vocabulary quantity, enhance their discourse awareness, and improve their reading speed in the English reading class from the aspect of vocabulary, discourse and reading speed which are closely related to the reading ability. This study takes non-English major sophomores in Shaanxi Normal University as subjects, and gives some of them18-week training combined with the teaching materials to explore whether this training program can effectively promote the development of college English students’ reading ability.In this paper, the research is done in three steps. Firstly, in the primary stage of the research, the experimental group and the control group will take a reading test to check the two groups’ English level. Besides, the questionnaire is adopted to test the subjects’ vocabulary, discourse knowledge and reading speed before the experiment. Secondly, during the experiment, the18-week training program is carried out in the experimental class. Meanwhile, traditional reading teaching is conducted in the control class. Finally, in the last stage of the research, questionnaire, interview and post-test of English reading comprehension are adopted again to collect data. Through comparison and analysis of the data before the experiment and after the experiment, it is proved that this research does enlarge students’ vocabulary quantity, enhance their discourse awareness, and improve their reading speed. The English reading ability of students in the experimental class also have been developed to a certain extent, which thereby verify the correctness and feasibility of the training program.Through this research, this article explores the concrete scheme to promote the development of college students’reading ability, and applies this scheme to the classroom teaching practice. By means of the investigation and comparison of the data obtained, it is shown that the training program is of great help to the development of college students’ English reading ability. This paper aims to help students drive up the scores of reading in CET, lay a solid foundation for their future reading study and provide English teachers with suggestions on how to teach reading efficiently.