Keywords: English; Reading; Ability; Cultivate?
English reading ability is directly related to the quality of English learning. Unfortunately, the effect of our reading teaching is not satisfactory. Because the traditional English teaching takes on the teaching tasks of basic language knowledge such as vocabulary and grammar, English teachers often spend a lot of time and energy on imparting, reviewing, mastering and practicing knowledge points. For reading training, especially reading ability training with discourse ability, thinking ability and reading skills as the core, students' reading ability has not been substantially improved. ?
With the increasing amount of junior high school English reading, the limitation of junior high school students' thinking ability has become a big obstacle to improve their English test scores. Reading comprehension questions are increasingly testing students' understanding of the implied meaning, logical structure and general idea of the article. The answers to questions are mostly hidden in the context of the article, and students usually can't get them directly from the literal meaning. They must use their brains and activate their thinking. Therefore, in order to get high marks in English exams, students must learn to use thinking methods such as analysis, synthesis, induction, judgment and reasoning flexibly. From this perspective, how to improve students' English reading ability has become an urgent English teaching topic. ?
1. What factors affect students' English reading ability?
1. Bad reading habits?
(1) Reading aloud, the main disadvantage of this habit is that it affects the reading speed. Reading aloud is often manifested in different forms, not necessarily sound, and sometimes it may be silently moving the tongue, throat, lips, etc. But this will undoubtedly hinder the scanning speed of eyes and increase the stage of sound, so we should train and develop the good habit of reading directly with vision. ?
(2) Too intensive reading, because English teaching usually focuses on the accumulation of phrases and the analysis of long sentences, many students often analyze sentences when reading and stop to look up words they don't understand. As a result, I understand the sentence, but I don't know how to grasp the article, which not only affects the reading speed, but also kills my reading interest. Therefore, we should cultivate our ability to guess words, using context instead of looking it up in the dictionary. ?
(3) Repeated reading is too frequent, that is, after reading a sentence or a paragraph, I will go back and watch it again. This seriously affects the reading speed. This is a sign that students are not confident in reading. ?
2. Ignore reading skills?
In actual reading, most middle school students simply operate in a seemingly sequential way, writing articles first and then doing problems. What I don't know is that you will get twice the result with half the effort after using some reading skills, such as combining intensive reading with extensive reading, skimming, looking up words and guessing words. Flexible use of reading skills can make a qualitative leap in reading ability. ?
Less reading, too narrow knowledge. Most students only do relevant reading training in class, and seldom enrich themselves through newspapers and magazines. Unfamiliarity with the differences between Chinese and western cultures also has a negative impact on reading. ?
Lack of reading thinking. Some students are satisfied with superficial understanding and ignore deep understanding and evaluative understanding. They are at a loss about the topics that can't be answered directly in the article, and they lack understanding and thinking about the essence of the article. Therefore, they should train themselves to master the general idea of the whole article and improve their ability through paragraph induction and sentence analysis. ?
Second, cultivate students' reading ability in various ways?
In order to improve students' reading ability, we should also cultivate students' reading ability in various ways. The first is to read carefully in a limited time. In a limited time, by asking understandable questions (usually five small questions), guide students to analyze, compare, reason, synthesize, summarize and summarize what they read, so as to master the essence of the passage and all the details of the content, and then let students answer the questions orally or in writing. The second is to advocate cooperative reading activities. In reading teaching, the research group carefully designs various tasks, which are completed by students through various forms of group activities. Teachers cultivate students' cooperative awareness and cooperative learning ability, so that students can understand each other's views and learn to express their own views. Third, retell the passage. While cultivating reading ability, we can activate the knowledge and ability modules stored in students' long-term memory by retelling short passages, thus improving students' language and oral expression ability. Fourth, the issue of openness. Use divergent thinking, around the topic assigned by the teacher, inspire on the basis of short articles, broaden your horizons, give full play to your imagination, state your own views, conduct communicative activities in class, and improve your ability to solve problems. ?
Third, learn to guess new words and read by time?
Some new words are often encountered in reading. In general, you don't need to look up new words in the dictionary, so as to keep the consistency of reading and not affect the reading speed and the overall understanding of the article. So, what should we do? On the one hand, we can judge the word class or word meaning through word formation analysis. On the other hand, we can judge the meaning of the context according to its content and tone. If individual words are difficult to guess and affect the understanding of the article, you should look them up in the dictionary. According to the syllabus, the reading speed of junior high school students is 400 to 500 words per minute, and the correct understanding rate reaches 70%. So I often do timing training to improve my reading speed and understanding ability. ?
Fourth, strengthen the mastery of students' background knowledge?
In the past English reading teaching, teachers often only paid attention to the explanation of the reading text itself, even the mastery of each sentence and word, while ignoring the introduction of background knowledge and cultural knowledge. Actually, knowing some background knowledge will get twice the result with half the effort in English reading. Teachers can use special time every semester to explain some knowledge about foreign background and culture to students according to the theme. For example, on the basis of understanding English reading topics for many years, teachers can give students a general explanation of the major countries in the world from the aspects of customs, etiquette, diet and education. Teachers can also introduce relevant cultural background knowledge of various countries when speaking relevant English reading articles. ?
5. Insist on reading training?
After each student learns some sentence patterns, the teacher should provide some short passages and dialogues with the same difficulty as the text for reading. After the dialogue, these essays and exercises should be designed around the structural characteristics of related sentence patterns as far as possible, so that common sentence patterns can be presented to students in different forms many times according to the memory law, and the ability of students to identify common sentence patterns can be cultivated. Therefore, insisting on reading training can not only familiarize and master the commonly used sentence patterns learned, but also tap students' inherent potential, improve students' reading ability more effectively and form good reading habits, which is an important part of learning English well. ?
Sixth, pay attention to extracurricular reading?
Pay attention to extracurricular reading guidance, choose appropriate reading materials, expand extracurricular reading and increase information input. We should pay attention to reading in and out of class. You can't just read in class, but also increase your reading after class, so that your reading ability will be gradually improved. When students choose reading materials, they often cannot judge whether they are suitable or not. Therefore, teachers should pay attention to students' reading situation and make reasonable suggestions in time. The appropriateness of reading materials directly affects students' reading interest and effect. Rural middle school students, in particular, do not have much information in their hands, and their reading needs to be increased. Increasing information input is the primary task of rural middle school students. Due to the limitation of conditions, I copied and distributed selected materials to students after class. The selected materials mainly focus on the interesting content of the materials; The difficulty of the materials should be moderate and suitable for the actual level of students; The subject matter of the materials should be diverse and extensive, which can expand students' knowledge and broaden their horizons. Materials should have a distinct era. It can involve hot topics such as science and technology, economic reform, health and environmental protection, leisure tourism and so on. Reading is not only helpful for students to enlarge their vocabulary, enrich their language knowledge, broaden their horizons and explore their ideas, but also helps them to understand the cultural background, living habits, thinking habits and English-specific language expressions of Britain and the United States, thus improving their reading ability and English application ability. ?
In short, the improvement of students' reading ability is a long and long process. How to apply foreign language teaching theory to teaching practice and promote the leap of teaching theory in teaching practice is an important task for foreign language teachers. We should constantly strengthen the theoretical research of our English teaching, improve our English reading teaching ability, and use it to guide students' learning and improve their English reading ability.