论文总字数：60156字

摘 要

1. Introduction 1

1.1 Research background 1

1.2 Research purposes and significance 1

1.3 The structure of this thesis 2

2.Literature Review 3

2.1 The definition of reading comprehension ability 3

2.2 Theoretical framework 3

2.2.1 Multiple intelligence theory 3

2.2.2 Cognitive structure theory 4

2.3 Relevant empirical research 5

2.4 Research gap 6

3. Methodology 7

3.1 Research questions 7

3.2 Research subjects 7

3.3 Research instruments 7

3.4 Research procedures 7

4. Result and Discussion 9

4.1 Factors influencing reading comprehension ability 9

4.1.1 Language factors 9

4.1.2 Cognitive factors 10

4.1.3 Cultural background factors 12

4.1.3.1 Influence of historical culture 12

4.1.3.2 Influence of geographic culture 12

4.1.3.3 Influence of custom 14

4.1.3.4 Influence of religious culture 14

4.2 Suggestions on improving reading comprehension ability 16

4.2.1 Enriching English vocabulary 16

4.2.2 Improving the ability of discourse analysis 17

4.2.3 Expanding culture background Information 18

5.Conclusion 20

5.1 Main discovery and implications 20

5.2 Limitations and suggestions for future research 21

References 22

Appendix I: Reading Comprehension Test 24

Appendix II: Questionnaire 28

Appendix III: Interview 30

Acknowledgments

I heartily appreciate those who have offered help to me when I was writing this thesis.

First, I would like to show my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Sun Li, who has offered me a lot of guidance. Whether from the beginning of the topic selection or in the process of data collection, Ms. Sun always endeavors to give me pertinent suggestions, which inspires me to put forward my thoughts. With her help, I find a thesis topic that interests me and develop my paper based on research blank. Without her constant and illuminating instruction, this paper could not have reached its present form. Her professional knowledge, rigorous academic attitude, patience and easy-going personality charm also have great influence on me.

Then, I feel like giving my appreciation to my friends who accompany and support me when I felt distressed because of barriers in both thesis and life. I love communicating with them to share happiness and sadness. Without their encouragement and condolence, I couldn't manage to solve all kinds of difficulties in life.

Last but not least, I would like to express my profound love and gratitude to my family. My parents always give me plenty of inspirations to solve problems when I come cross dilemma in both study and life. It is because of their support that I could change my major to English and pursue what I truly love. Their encouragement has always been my great momentum to finish this paper.

Abstract

The comprehension of English texts is widely known to be challenging for English learners in China because there are plenty of factors to affect reading comprehensive competence, including both the language knowledge to be grasped by learners and their understanding of the cultural background. In this thesis, the important factors to affect English majors’ reading comprehensive ability are analyzed in detail. Two kinds of research instruments, including an interview and a questionnaire, are used to collect objective information about the key factors influencing the reading comprehensive ability of English majors. Through the analysis of the result of the two research instruments, this thesis aims to find answers to the two research questions: 1) What are the key factors influencing English major students’ reading comprehension ability? 2) how can we improve English major students’ reading comprehension competence in line with the key factors influencing their competence?

Based on Multiple Intelligence Theory (Gardner, 1990), Cognitive Structure Theory (Bruner, 2006) and the result of reading comprehension test for respondents, three factors to affect English majors’ reading comprehensive ability are concluded. In this thesis, three factors to affect English majors’ reading comprehensive ability are analyzed, including language factors, cognitive factors and cultural factors. In accordance with those barriers, some suggestions on how to solve the problems with business English reading comprehension will be provided.

Conclusion in this thesis can be reached that the three factors cast deep influence on the reading comprehensive competence of English majors and teachers of such English majors should take measures to improve English majors’ reading comprehensive ability via increasing students’ vocabularies, improving their ability to make textual analysis and encouraging learners to know more about the culture of English-speaking countries.

The analysis in this thesis is important because it helps English majors and their teachers gain some enlightenment on how to improve the efficiency of English reading teaching of English majors in universities.

Key Words: English reading comprehension ability; English majors; factors influencing reading comprehension ability

中文摘要

众所周知，英语阅读理解对于我国英语学习者来说是一项颇具挑战性的任务，因为英语阅读能力的提高受很多因素的影响，其中既包含语言知识的储备，也包括学习者对于阅读文本背景知识的了解等等。

本文根据多元智能理论（Gardner，1990），认知结构理论（Bruner，2006）和研究对象阅读理解测试的情况总结影响英语专业学生阅读理解能力的三大因素。具体说来，笔者将对影响英语专业学生的阅读理解能力中的三大因素进行分析，包括语言因素，认知因素和文化因素。根据这些因素对英语专业学生阅读理解能力的影响，笔者将就如何提高英语专业学生的阅读理解能力提供一些建议。笔者拟定选择两种研究工具来搜集影响英语专业学生阅读理解能力的主要因素的相关信息，包括访谈和调查问卷。通过对两种研究工具的结果进行分析，笔者将回答以下两个研究问题：1）影响英语专业学生的阅读理解能力的主要因素有哪些？2）如何结合影响其能力的主要因素来提高英语专业学生的阅读理解能力？

本文分析可以得出以下结论：语言，认知和文化因素深刻影响着英语专业人才的阅读理解能力，所以英语专业教师应当采取以下措施来确保英语阅读教学的高效性，如提高学生的词汇量，提高他们的文本分析能力并鼓励学生进一步了解英语国家的文化。本文分析的重要性在于：该分析能够帮助英语专业学生及其教师获得一些提高大学英语专业阅读教学效率方面的启示。

关键词：英语阅读理解能力；英语专业学生；阅读理解能力影响因素

1. Introduction

1.1 Research background

At the beginning of the 21st century, the whole world is gradually becoming a global village. People have easier access to the natural and convenient communication with others all around the world. It shows that the most noticeable feature of the world is that international communication develops so fast that more and more people realize the significance of the improving English proficiency. At present, English has already become one of the crucial tasks for students. The lack of adequate knowledge about culture in English-speaking countries often leads to the low efficiency of English learning and the little motivation to learn this language. Hence, it is necessary for English teachers to know what factors prevent English learners from understanding English texts and doing English comprehension exercises precisely. Such information is vital for English major students who have difficulty in English reading comprehension. In fact, one of the most important reasons that prevent English major students from comprehending texts is that they do not grasp enough information about the cultural background of English-speaking countries. That is exactly the reason why this thesis is written: the obstacles that prevent English majors from understanding English texts will be analyzed in detail so as to provide the teachers of English majors with some suggestions on how to improve students’ proficiency in reading comprehensive ability.

1.2 Research purposes and significance

Since this research targets to analyze the most important factors that influence English majors’ reading comprehensive competence, the major purposes of this research can be summarized as: explaining what factors influence English majors’ English reading comprehensive ability and providing some suggestions on English teaching to improve English majors’ reading comprehensive competence. we will discuss the research questions on the basis of Multiple Intelligence Theory (Gardner, 1990) and Cognitive Structure Theory (Bruner, 2006). The analysis in this thesis is important because the result of this research will help English majors and their teachers gain some clues on improving their English reading comprehensive ability. To be specific, the factors that influence students’ reading efficiency will be an inspiration for the linguistic research about the thinking process of human. Moreover, the result of this research will provide important enlightenment on how to guarantee the improvement of English majors’ reading comprehensive competence. Hence, the teachers of English majors will gain some hints about what teaching content should be emphasized and what teaching approaches should be applied to English teaching in reading classes. Students will deepen their understanding of English reading, which is crucial for the development of their reading proficiency and comprehensive competence.

1.3 The structure of this thesis

This thesis firstly gives a brief introduction about its purposes and significance. Then relevant literature review will be discussed in the second part, including the definition of reading comprehension ability, introduction of the theory framework, empirical research and research gap. In the third chapter, this paper mainly presents its research methodology, including research subjects, instruments and procedures. The research result of questionnaires is discussed in the fourth chapter, explaining what factors influence English majors’ English reading comprehension ability. Further findings in interview are mentioned in the fifth chapter, providing some suggestions on English reading teaching to improve English majors’ reading comprehension competence. Finally, conclusions are made about factors influencing English majors’ reading comprehension ability.

2.Literature Review

2.1 The definition of reading comprehension ability

Koda (2007) argues that reading comprehension neither can be simply regarded as unitary product nor a set of information produced by technical operation. It is a kind of product combined by these two processes. Grabe (2000) tries to explain reading comprehension as two processes, one called lower-level process, and the other higher-level process. The former one is a skill-oriented process that automatically deals with language, including vocabulary extraction, sentence construction, and memory stimulus. The later one is a process backed by background knowledge and inferential capability.

This thesis believes that reading comprehension is the result that comes from the interaction between readers and text. It is a process that readers extract information from text and procure cohesive meaning.

2.2 Theoretical framework

In the Multiple intelligence theory, Gardner (1990) advocates contextualized assessment, which means to consider environmental factors to ensure objective and comprehensive evaluation of learner’s intelligence. Garner’s evaluation system provides guidelines for this thesis to gain sight into how to ensure detailed evaluation of learners’ reading comprehension ability. The linguistic intelligence mentioned in the theory also provides a relevant researching direction for this thesis. Bruner’s cognitive structure theory is significant because it reminds educators of the importance to construct knowledge systems and to emphasize learners’ autonomy of learning. According to these two theories, three factors to affect English majors’ reading comprehensive ability are extracted, including language factors, cognitive factors and cultural factors.

2.2.1 Multiple intelligence theory

This theory is put forward by the American scholar Howard Gardner. Gardner has been researching patients with brain trauma for several years to summarize the general rules about the differences among the patients’ learning ability. Based on these general laws, Gardner divides human intelligence into eight parts: “linguistic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, spatial intelligence, motion intelligence, music intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, introspective intelligence, and natural observation intelligence” (1990: 237). The linguistic intelligence, the core part of learning competence, is actually the competence to express oneself via oral or written approach. The second category is logical and mathematical intelligence, which means to investigate specific questions, to conduct relevant experiments to explore or verify the answer, and to summarize the general rules of things. The third category is spatial intelligence, which refers to “people’s sensitivity to colors, lines, shapes, forms, spaces, and their relationships. With such competence, people can feel, distinguish, remember, and change the spatial relationship of objects, as well as have the ability to express thoughts and emotions” (Gardner, 1990: 284). The fourth part is operational intelligence of the limbs, which refers to “the ability to use the limbs to express ideas or feelings, and to use both hands to intelligently produce or transform things” (Gardner, 1990: 285). The fifth type is musical intelligence, which mainly refers to “the ability to sensitively sense tones, melodies, rhythms, and timbres.” (Gardner, 1990: 286). The sixth type indicates interpersonal intelligence. The intelligence covers the ability to precisely understand others and express one’s own thoughts appropriately. The seventh kind is introspective intelligence, which could be defined as the capability of admitting the self-advantages and defects. The eighth type is the natural exploration intelligence, which means to “identify various objects and phenomena in the world” (Gardner, 1990: 287). The last type of intelligence is existential intelligence, which means the core point of existence of people through the birth and death of others, and this type of intelligence also includes the tendency to think about this major issue.

In accordance with the classification, Gardner (1990) summarizes a series of criteria for assessing student intelligence, and expands the basis for assessing learners learning levels.

2.2.2 Cognitive structure theory

The cognitive structure theory is put forward by the famous scholar J. S. Bruner, a famous educational psychologist and cognitive linguist. According to Burner, the essence of learning is the collection of more and more language knowledge to form a large system of various knowledge. In order to further explain the cognitive process, Bruner defines the term cognitive structure as “the general way in which external objects are perceived and categorized in accordance with the conceptual structure of learners’ experience” (Bruner, 2006: 324). Bruner summarizes his standpoints about cognitive structures as follow.

First, Bruner (2006) proposes that the learning process is essentially the continuous improvement and development of cognitive structure. The learning of specific knowledge related to one subject actually aims at constructing the general knowledge system of the subject. In the language collecting process, learners connect the new knowledge with the ones that have already been stored in their mind, and use the knowledge system to understand, analyze and solve various problems. Secondly, classification is the core of learning activities. Humans tend to define new objects or phenomena via classifying them into the existing types in their knowledge system. And then the unique features of the new objects are paid attention to differ the objects or phenomena from other similar ones. When the learners believe that they have finished learning all the necessary knowledge about the target language, the process is terminated. At last, Bruner (2006) holds the opinion that the most perfect learning method is to discover and learn simultaneously. The term “discovery learning” refers to learning method aiming at the cultivation of inquiry thinking methods. During such a process, language learners are required to summarize the key rules of how vocabularies or grammatical rules are applied in actual sentences. Bruner (2006) believes that learners’ activeness to think and summarize the principles is the most efficient way to integrate the new knowledge into the existing knowledge system that learners have constructed.

2.3 Relevant empirical research

Based on the existing research, three models of L2 reading comprehension ability are universally discussed. One of these models is called Bi-divisible View. This model signifies that L2 reading comprehension ability consists of understanding for basic words and other more complex reading comprehension ability.

Chinese scholars Kong and Li (2006) once did analytical research to prove that this Bi-divisible model attaches great significance to the guidance of English reading test. On the basis of the Bi-divisible View, scholar Qin (2012) once discussed the factors that influencing students’ reading comprehension ability by means of questionnaires from the aspect of vocabulary recognition ability and language comprehension ability and found some relevant factors such as vocabulary knowledge and background information, which has significance for empirical research of this paper. Also, Multiple Intelligence Theory (Gardner, 1990) and Cognitive Structure Theory (Bruner, 2006) provide research direction for this thesis.

2.4 Research gap

The research of L2 is far from complete compared to that of L1. So, we still need to go into the subject in depth. Although some scholars have established models of reading comprehension ability, the specific factors that influence students’ reading comprehension ability are still waiting to be found. Actually, the two researchers Wen and Qin, who wrote papers about English comprehension ability, have discussed the relevant factors based on general Chinese people’s performance in the process of English reading. However, neither of them studies the subject targeted at students from English major. Compared to students from other majors, English major students are more typical and they are acknowledged to be superior in learning English. What’s more, existing research just focuses on theoretically analyzing the subject rather than practically making survey about it. From my point of view, the theory should be related with daily teaching activities and given practical meaning. Therefore, it is meaningful to regard English major students as target audience. And few scholars have ever researched this subject by means of interview which can help us gain more insight into respondents’ true views and go into some questions in depth. Therefore, Interview, used as the research instrument in this thesis, is also significant.

3. Methodology

3.1 Research questions

This thesis aims to answer the following two questions:1) What are the factors influencing English majors’ reading comprehension ability? 2) How can we improve English majors’ reading comprehension ability through these relevant factors?

3.2 Research subjects

The respondents of the survey are 62 sophomores from English major in Nanjing Tech University. To ensure collecting objective information from those research subjects, the 62 sophomores are selected randomly from two classes in accordance with their performance in the final exams of extensive reading class. To be specific, the 21 of the participants of the questionnaire obtain the score of higher than 85. 21 of them achieve the score between 84 and 70. And the rest of them get the score of lower than 69. Hence, the conclusion based on those English majors’ answers in the questionnaire can help readers obtain comprehensive information about the crucial factors to influence their English reading comprehension ability.

3.3 Research instruments

There are two research instruments to be chosen to investigate the major factors to influence English majors’ reading comprehension competence, including interview and questionnaire. The first research instrument is questionnaire. It is based on the Multiple Intelligence Theory, Cognitive Structure Theory and the result of reading comprehension test. There are totally 62 questionnaires sent to the English majors and all of them are valid. The second research instrument is interview designed on the result of questionnaire. In the interview, ten sophomores of English major are required to find out what are the most important type of factors to influence their English reading comprehension ability and how these factors work on their reading comprehension process. Based on the result of the interview, the most important factors that influence English majors’ English reading comprehension ability are analyzed and ways of improving reading comprehension ability are concluded.

3.4 Research procedures

To make sure of the validity of this research, the researcher organizes a reading comprehension test for the 62 respondents. After having the test, they are given a questionnaire designed by the test result and answer it according their performance in the reading comprehension test. Then, an interview is organized to investigate what are the key factors that cast influence on English majors’ ability to read and how these factors work on their ability. In accordance with the result of English majors’ answers to the questionnaire and interview, and the theoretical frameworks in this research, some suggestions are concluded on how to help English majors improve their English reading comprehension ability.

4. Result and Discussion

According to students’ performance in the reading comprehension test, we can find that they have difficulty in answering questions concerning language knowledge, cognition and background information. The result of test can be discussed from three aspects in the questionnaire: the language factors, the cognitive factors and cultural background factors.

4.1 Factors influencing reading comprehension ability

4.1.1 Language factors

The first and most fundamental factor to influence English majors’ reading comprehension ability is related to the language, which means the amount of language knowledge grasped by English majors is an important factor to affect English majors to improve their reading comprehension competence rapidly. Language factors to influence English reading comprehension ability are complicated and are related to various parts of language knowledge, which can be analyzed from the following three aspects.

Firstly, the vocabulary grasped by English majors is the first important factor to influence English majors’ reading proficiency. “The English texts with much unknown words are normally difficult to be understood by English majors and negatively influence their confidence with their reading competence” (Jiang, 2011: 140-141). According to English major’s answers to the question 1 in the questionnaire, about two thirds of the college students regard the vocabulary as the factor that deeply affects their English comprehension competence. When there are excessive unknown vocabularies in most English texts that they read, English major students may gradually lose their interest in reading and their motivation to practice reading will decrease accordingly. However, when most English words are known by English majors, they are more likely to understand the text easily.

Secondly, the grammatical rules are another noticeable factor to influence English majors’ reading competence. As shown by the analysis of the questionnaire result, about 71% of the students to attend the questionnaire agree that the grammatical knowledge has profound influence on their reading comprehensive ability. The complexity of long compound sentences in the texts that they read is an important barrier that obstruct them from improving their reading comprehension ability. In some formal English texts, long compound sentences are frequently used and the proper understanding of such sentences requires fully understanding of grammatical rules of English, especially the relationship among antecedents that guide words to initiate subordinate clauses. However, in some compound sentences in English texts, there are more than one subordinate clauses, which makes it difficult to understand the compound sentence and such difficulty might cause anxiety in reading English texts.

The third noticeable language factor to affect English majors’ reading comprehensive competence is their perception of fixed expressions like idioms. Among the ten students to attend the interview, 4 of them have listed the idiom as a crucial factor to influence their reading comprehensive ability. Moreover, the students to answer the questionnaires also prove the important influence of English majors’ perception of fixed idioms on their reading comprehensive ability. 1/6 of them absolutely agree with the influence of such fixed idioms on their reading comprehension ability and more than half of the students agree with the influence of their understanding of fixed idioms on their reading comprehensive competence. The reason for such deep influence of English majors’ understanding of fixed idioms is that idioms are normally originated from cultural background. Since the idioms and the usage of idioms are fixed, English majors normally take more time to memorize such expressions and it’s frequently seen that many English majors make mistakes in the collocations or orders of fixed expressions. Their improper memorization of such expressions has negative influence on their English reading and reduces their efficiency in reading English texts.

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