EnglishTeachinginReadingSkills

English Teaching in Reading SkillsOutline. Introduction. English Reading Ability1. Based on textbooks, to carry out the overall teaching (1) Pre-reading, teachers, and taught a number of difficult words or phrases,or impede the meaning of the word or phrase text(2) when read in order to read the details of the core, rational analysis of the nature and structure of text features, take a different reading methods to improve students ability to access and process information, thus all-round way to improve students reading skills. Brief and Concise reading Careful selection and training of reading skills and methods.(1) Inspection(2) Prediction. Word-guessing Strengthen the extra-curricular reading, broaden their knowledge1. Timing of quantitative reading, improve reading speed2. Cultivate reading habits, improve reading efficiency4. Emphasis on the word, sentence, paragraph, step by step. SummaryEnglish Teaching in Reading SkillsAbstract English reading skills is important and necessary for learning English, , reading ability is one about language comprehension. In todays English language learning and using English reading has an important position which is reflected in the reading skills development and training so that students have a truly comprehensive reading skills and ability which include the level of understanding and reading speed. As follows are my views about improving the English reading ability：First, based on books, to carry out the overall teaching; Second, through inspection, prediction, word-guessing methods and techniques; Third, through extensive reading, timing reading to enhance students reading speed and ability.Key words: English reading , culture and training, the overall teaching, reading speed and ability 摘要：英语阅读技能，是学习英语的一项必备的重要条件，阅读能力是一项语言综合运用能力。在当今的英语学习、用应中占据举足轻重的地位。体现在阅读技能的的培养和训练，使学生具有真正全面的阅读理解能力，其主要包括理解程度和阅读速度，本文就提高阅读能力浅谈几点看法：一、课本，开展整体教学；二、通过查阅，预测，猜词等方法和技巧；三、泛读，定时定量阅读提高学生阅读速度和能力。关键词：阅读能力、培养和训练、整体教学、阅读速度和能力1. Introduction As reading is a part of academic literacy, English teachers usually have high expectations of a students ability to cope with the demands of reading in English. Most college students wish to read more books. Reading is a way for college students to be more knowledgeable and successful. However, it is also an activity that many college students dont enjoy very much. To succeed at schools, students need to possess a range of strategies and skills that support self-directed learning. Traditionally, many of these strategies and skills, some of which are highly generic, are not explicitly taught to students in the expectation that students either already have these skills, or will naturally acquire and develop these skills in their course of study. In order to improve the college students ability of English reading, we should answer the following questions: What are the English reading habits of students? How to become an effective reader? How to foster the English reading habits? 2. The characteristics of college students With the development of society, science and technology develop at high speed and the competition in the society become sharp. Studies in the past have shown that the exam-oriented educational system promotes rote learning, and so that there needs to be a paradigm shift in how the college students view education and about the way they learn. Most college students read English materials only to pass exams and do not read for pleasure. However, the situation changes now. In order to become well-learnt people that the society needs, most college students long for extensive English reading, hoping to do preparation for the future job by this way. At the same time, the purposes of college students are to complete the studies and to obtain good results. In order to adapt to the demands of society and school, college students treat seeking knowledge as the first duty. They relate themselves to the society closely, hoping to enrich themselves through reading and become the learned persons who can face the challenges of the society. Therefore, the motivation of the majority of college students is definite. It is also obvious that the English reading materials gradually change from the paper materials to the electronic reading materials. The Internet that opens another window for the college students becomes the most convenient tool for college students to get information. Now the serious problem is that college students can read on some level, but many do not read effectively. In other words, many college students take it for granted that they could understand concepts or lessons by memorizing the English words and information rather than understanding the ideas that are expressed by the words. Consequently, information is retained mainly for the purpose of passing an exam; memorization is mistaken for learning.3. Effective English reading strategiesBecause a large portion of time at schools is spent on working with written sources, and because there are lots of English materials to be covered in a short amount of time, it is essential that reading behaviors of English majors should be both purposeful and efficient. Reading is talking and discussing with the reader himself, with the author and others. So as the readers, the first thing for the readers do is to accumulate information before reading. To ensure the good results of reading, the college students also need to develop effective reading strategies. Knowing how to read effectively involves accumulating background information before reading, selecting the English materials, understanding the structure of texts, how to read for different purposes, and how to reflect on your reading. 3.1 Accumulating background information before readingReading is a receptive language process. It is a psycholinguistic process in that it starts with a linguistic surface representation encoded by a writer and ends with meanings that the reader constructs. There is thus an essential interaction between language and thought in reading. The writer encodes thoughts as language and the reader encodes the language to thought. Reading is not passive but active, and in fact an interactive process that has been recognized for some time in first or native language reading. In the English reading, it is a process that needs not only the college students active participation, predication and information processing, but also their prior experience and background knowledge. The cultural factors play an important role in the process of English reading. Some cultural factors cause problems in reading directly so as to confuse college students and hinder their understanding. Other culture misunderstandings may dangle in their mind and prevent them from grasping the real meaning. Culture and language are closely related to each other. As one way of communication, reading English materials reflect cultural differences through the language in written form. The readers should aware the cultural differences and try their best to accumulate background knowledge of all sorts. So the first piece of advice that will be given here is to do as much reading as the students can. College students in the school can make use of the library resources to support their study and self-learning. The kinds of resources include English books, English journal articles, English magazines, etc., as well as a wide range of library services. Now thousands of books, magazines, journal articles and newspapers have electrical versions. It is no doubt that the college students task will be much easier if they know some websites they really want to find online. 3.2 Improving your English reading strategies3.2.1 Choice reading Choice reading is very important. Actually it is a process of selecting English materials. The reader should clearly recognize the classification of the English books and should certainly know which type of English book he is reading. It is best if the reader know his purpose of reading before reading starts. It means that the reader should turn his attention to practical goals. To receive the information, the reader can read not only the book title, the subtitle, the table of contents, but also the authors preface, the abstract introduction and the index. These are all the information that authors want to transmit to the reader. According to these clues, the college students can choose different types of English reading materials with the different demands. The college students should also be aware that different reading skills should be adopted when the English reading material are different. 3.2.2 How to select English sourcesIn order to get useful information, the college students had better answer the following two questions: How well those English sources meet the purpose of reading? How reliably the author presents those ideas and information in the book? The college students have better read things they are interested in so that the hard work required for comprehension will seem much more pleasurableAlso，the college students will be much more eager to understand what they are reading，not only as a means to improve their reading comprehension，but also as a means to better understand the interesting subject-matter. The process of selecting an English source includes examining its publisher, its reference and its author(s). Depending on the readers purpose of reading, it can also involve assessing timeliness. Some ways of selecting English sources are follows:(i) Pay more attention to the timeliness When a book is published, it always has a special social background. For example, if a reader wants to find some information about computers, hed better check the materials published after 1940s.(ii) Evaluating the publisher of an English book Experienced readers may have some information about a books publisher. He may know the book that is published by an individual, an organization or government agency. Generally speaking, authors and publishers usually have a bias about a particular topic or issue. When the publisher is a scholarly or professional journal, the reader can often gain an understanding of what kinds of articles it publishes by looking over the contents of several issues of the journal or by reading a few of the articles found within it. It is very important for the English majors to know some famous publishers of the English-speaking countries.（iii）Evaluating the relevance of an English book If a reader reads with a definite purpose, such as for a research project, he should have a look at the relevance firstly. Relevance is the extent to which a source provides information that person can use in evaluating the materials. There are several ways to determine whether the information presented in a scholarly or professional journal article is likely to be relevant to the readers reading purpose. There are two main strategies to help the reader to determine whether the article is relevant to readers needs and interests. An abstracta brief description of the article and its resultsoften appears at the beginning of the article. When an abstract is not used, an articles introduction often provides similar information.（iv）Evaluating the author(s) of an English book In order to get a better understanding of a book, the reader had better know the author(s) as much as possible. No matter what kind of book the reader chooses to read, its important to know its author or authors. 3.3 The process of English reading If the readers face with a difficult and complex English text, or if they do not read effectively under normal circumstances, the readers can improve the way of reading by being more purposeful in the approach to reading. Think of reading as a three-stage process that consists of:(1) Plan for English reading(2) English reading(3) Reflection 3.3.1 Planning for English reading Planning for English reading will help the reader to give the reading a focus. The reader can do preparation of reading by asking the following questions:What does the reader wants to get out of reading this English text? Are there any ideas that should be taken into English reading?Why has this particular English text been selected? Can the English text be subdivided into sections to read? What has skim reading told the reader about the English text? 3.3.2 English reading When a reader reads, the reader is looking at the communication of some kind of meaning in a structure. Since writers choose to organize material in a particular way, the reader needs to be able to see this structure in the text. Understanding the structure of an English text will help the college students to know how to read it. There are two main aspects of structure.(1) The development of ideas in sentences and paragraphs; (eg, some authors show their main viewpoints in the first or last sentence)(2) The development of the argument. Once a focus has been developed for reading, how the college students read a particular English text depending on the nature and structure of the English text. The following are some useful guiding principles that the student had better keep in mind.(1) Identify the starting point of the writers argument - usually this will be found in the first or second paragraph.(2) Remember that English follow rules of grammar. By understanding the rules that govern speech，the reader can eliminate some false conclusions and gain a better understanding of what is being said.(3) See if the reader can detect any assumptions the writer has made, or the start of a particular method of argument.(4) Identify important, or central, ideas (or any stated principles) in paragraphs as the reader reads them. (If there is more than one, try to work out which is the most important or central);(5) Evaluate the evidence that has been presented in support of ideas or principles, and decide whether the evidence is relevant, persuasive, and convincing; (6) Assess whether the conclusions are justified on the basis of the evidence that has been presented. After the reader has read carefully through the English text in full, as suggested above, make some brief notes on:(1) the understanding of the English text; (2) the preliminary response to the ideas and arguments that have been presented. In the process of reading an English essay, the college students should try to read without stopping when meeting unfamiliar words and phrases. The college students can underline the new words and look them up in a dictionary after finishing. If reading is often interrupted, the college students will find that it is very difficult to create an understanding of a whole text. Generally speaking, reading interruption has the opposite effect and even causes the reading to be fragmented. If the college students keep stopping, it might be difficult to create an overview of an article and to remember what they have read. The meaning guessing strategy has been proved more effective than stopping the readers reading to look up individual words. When the college students try to figure out a words meaning from the context, they can answer the following questions. What does the close meaning of the word? What is the function of the word in the sentence? Is the word nonsensical in the sentence? By decoding the meaning of words in context, the college students are more likely to increase their reading speed, comprehension, and vocabulary. The college students can also guess the meaning of words through the cause and effect relation. During the process of reading, the college students may find some symbol words for the relation, such as because, as, since, therefore, as a result, etc. These words will help the college students to grasp the whole idea of the essay.3.3.3 Reflection Interacting with a piece of English reading material includes responding to the content of what the reader is reading. So while reading, the college students should not accept passively what an author says. Instead, they should ask questions, argue, comment, and match their experience and what they know against what the author is talking about. They should think about what they have read for a few minutes, and then consider the following:(1) Are there any unanswered questions about the meaning of the English text? If so, they should go back and skim read and/or read specific sections again. (2) Have they failed to recognize any assumption?(3) Have they understood the section of the English text related?(4) Have they made connections between the English text and other English materials they have read?(5) Whats their opinion on the conclusion of the English book?The questions above can help college students to work out what an English essay or story means to them. And the answers are also important here because a piece of English material never means precisely the same thing for every reader. The reader shapes his own comprehension by joining what he knows and what the author tells him and becomes a unique reader.4. Ways of reading English texts4.1 Skim reading & Scanning reading What is skimming? Skimming is a reading technique that can help one to:(1) read more quickly (2) decide if the English text is interesting and whether the reader should read it in more details. When college students should use skimming? This is the strategy that college students employ when they want to obtain a quick overview of a English text. The term skimming is often confused with scanning. Remember that skimming is used to obtain the gist (the overall sense) of a piece of text. Scanning is a reading skill to find a particular point of information quickly in a text. It is very useful for the readers to scan the text for particular bits of information they are searching for. E.g. Use skimming to get the gist of a page of an English textbook to decide whether it is useful and should therefore be read more slowly and in more detail. E.g. Use scanning to find a particular number in a telephone directory. Scanning is used to obtain specific information from a piece of English text. Sometimes the college students can use both reading methods. They can skim a piece of English text to find out something interesting; they may wish to use scanning techniques to locate specific information. When the college students use skim reading method, they shouldnt read the whole text word-for-word. The college students should use as many clues as possible to get some background information: eg pictures or images related to the topic; an eye-catching title, etc. With the eyes skim over the surface of the text, the college students must try their best to find out any clues that can help them to understand the main idea of the text, and then look out some key words. The strategies always employ when they want to obtain a quick overview of an English text can be listed below:(1) reading the title, subtitle and subheading to find out what the English text is about.(2) reading the first and last sentence of each paragraph.(3) looking the illustration that may give the reader further information about the topic.(4) skimming over the English text to take in key words.(5) using the marker pen to mark out any items that the reader wants to re-read, or refer to later. Take reading English magazines and English newspapers for example. When reading an English newspaper, people typically only concentrate on the most interesting and glamorous parts of the newspaper. So the presses always use the eye-catching tile to attract the attention of the public. They will often ignore less interesting information that may be essential to a full understanding of a subject. It is typic