英语（心得）之如何提高大学生的英语阅读能力

英语（心得）之如何提高大学生的英语阅读能力

英语论文之如何提高大学生的英语阅读能力 ‎ How to Improve College Students` English Reading Abilities[Abstract] The paper aims at how to improve college students` English reading abilities. Reading is a basic ability in learning English. Through investigations, the writer finds that there are some obstacles to hinder college students from improving their abilities in reading comprehension in the process of reading. First, the paper discusses the reasons for improving college students` reading abilities: one is that students read in different ways for different purposes and the other is that students read for meanings. Second, combining with the two reasons and psychological mechanisms and cognitive process in English reading, it analyzes the factors of hindering the improvement of college students` reading abilities, that is, teachers` teaching methods and students` characteristics. Then, according to these factors, it gives solutions to getting rid of obstacles in English reading, such as emphasizing on the cultural background knowledge, the influence of discourse and the acquisition of lexicon. Finally, it mentions that teachers should pay attention to the training ‎ of reading skills in English teaching to help college students to master reading skills and improve their reading abilities.‎ ‎[Key Words] college students; reading abilities; reading comprehension; obstacles如何提高大学生的英语阅读能力【摘 要】 本文旨在如何提高大学生的英语阅读能力。阅读是学习英语的一种基本能力。通过调查，笔者发现学生在阅读过程中存在一些阻碍他们提高英语阅读能力的障碍。针对这一问题，本文首先谈论提高大学生阅读能力的两个原因：一方面，学生处于不同的目的采用不同的方式进行阅读；另一方面，学生在进行阅读是能够读懂文章的意思；其次，文章结合着两方面的原因和阅读的心理机制和认知过程，分析了阻碍大学生英语阅读能力提高的因素：教师的教学方法和学生自身的特点；接着根据这些因素，文章提出克服这些障碍的解决方法，比如，重视文化背景知识，重视语篇的影响，重视词汇的习得等等；最后文章提到老师应该注意阅读技巧的训练，帮助学生掌握阅读技巧，提高英语阅读能力.‎ ‎【关键词】 大学生；阅读能力；阅读理解；障碍 ‎ 1 Introduction Reading is a basic ability in learning English. Without reading, our society couldn’t make progress .Nowadays, we are in the process of economic integration and globalization.‎ ‎ Globalization strengthens global economy, politics, culture, society, science and technology linkages. In such a macro-background, people pay more and more attention to English learning and have higher and higher requirements of reading comprehension.‎ The aim of English teaching in college is to develop college students` ability of reading professional and original books. Therefore, besides listening, speaking, writing, translating and other aspects of skills, we should also focus on developing students` abilities in reading comprehension .Such kind of abilities mean that inpiduals understand the meaning that the author wants to express. And it is also a complicated thinking activity in the core of understanding.‎ ‎“Current models of the reading process focus on the interactive relation of reader and text. From this perspective, reading is understood to be a complex cognitive process in which reader and text interact to (re)create meaningful discourse.”Px Reading is valued not only as an educational tool, but as a source of enjoyment.‎ Therefore, this paper proposes to analyze the factors that ‎ influence the improvement of college students` abilities in reading comprehension, and help students to overcome obstacles in the process of reading and master some reading skills to improve their reading abilities. 2 Reasons for improving their reading abilities There are two reasons for improving their reading abilities.‎ First, students read in different ways for different purposes. Christine Nuttall has pointed out that college students couldn’t just read text books in their daily life. They will read various materials, such as novel, fiction, poetry, telephone directory, statistics, label on medicine leaflet, notice, and application form. They should know why they read each one, what they want to get from it, and how they read it. When they read each item, they need to use different kinds of reading skills. Do they read a telephone directory the same way as a poem? How about a timetable or a notice? Reading these is very different from reading a book. The way they deal with each text is strongly influenced by the purpose in reading. Quickly scanning a street map to find a place where they want to go is very different from reading a legal document. They will soon realize big differences in the reading ‎ speed they use.‎ Second, students read for meanings. Whatever their reasons for reading (excluding any reading for language learning), it is not very likely that they read just for pronunciations, grammatical structures, syntax, words. They read because they want to get something from the writing. They want to understand what the writer wants to tell them. An article can not only give us some facts, but also be enjoyment, ideas and feelings. No matter what it is, while they read, they want to get messages that the writer intended. They are interested in what the writing meant.‎ It is obvious that improving reading ability is very important if they want to be proficient readers.3 Psychological mechanisms and cognitive process in English reading Reading is a complex intellectual activity which is affected by many factors. In Psycholinguistics (New Edition), Gui Shichun has pointed out that reading comprehension which is consistent with language comprehension that is a complicated and general comprehension is a complicated psycholinguistic process. It is an interactive process between the reader and the text. He believes that the relation between reading and intellect are ‎ extremely close. Foreign language learners with good intellect can obtain more information in the process of reading. For reading is a very important way to acquire knowledge and develop intellectual emotion and it is a psychological activity. P91-116‎ When students are reading, many body organs, such as brain, eyes, nose, participate in the activity. In particular, the brain directly controls eye movement, lets readers identify language and reprocesses the acquired information. Chen Meimei, Rao Hui, Zhang Xicheng, Zhang Jun has pointed out that the research and development of reading psychology shows that it is unnecessary to speak or hear every word if students want to understand the meaning of a text. It is completely possible that they can directly understand its meaning while they read a text. P72 Efficient reading can achieve understanding. It means that students don’t need to understand a text through words to sound and even don’t need to read a text word by word to understand it. Therefore, those students can directly understand a text meaning through silent reading which is very important in English reading ability.‎ Moreover, in the process of reading comprehension, not only the linguistic knowledge which is generated through reading words ‎ plays an important role, but also the background knowledge which is provided by the brain also plays a great potential role. Background knowledge includes students` background knowledge of English speaking countries` society and culture, inpidual experiences, logical knowledge and the self-cultivation of language knowledge and so on. Experiments have shown that if some letters which are not associated with each other, are put together; the brain can only identify about four or five words immediately, or even a meaningful sentence. Thus, we can know that the more background knowledge, the better and faster one comprehends. And then there will be less difficult in reading, and the reading speed will be faster.‎ Christine Nuttall has pointed out that English reading comprehension is regarded as a cognitive activity which process information from written words. In general, there are two ways: one is the bottom-up processing; the other is the top-down processing. “In bottom-up processing, the readers build up a meaning from the black marks on the page recognizing letters and words, working out sentence structure. We can make conscious use of it when an initial reading leaves us confused. Perhaps we cannot ‎ believe that the apparent message was really what the writer intended; this can happen if our world knowledge is inadequate, or if the writer’s point of view is very different from our own. In that case, we must scrutinize the vocabulary and syntax to make sure we have grasped the plain sense correctly. Thus bottom-up processing can be used as a corrective to ‘tunnel vision’(seeing things from our own limited point of view).In top-down processing, we draw on our own intelligence and experience---the predictions we can make, based on the schemata we have acquired---to understand the text. As we saw, this kind of processing is used when we interpret assumptions and draw inferences. We make conscious use of it when we try to see the overall purpose of the text, or get a rough idea of the pattern of the writer’s argument, in order to make a reasoned guess at the next step (on the grounds that having an idea of what sth might mean can be a great help in interpreting it)” P16-17‎ Actually, in the process of reading comprehension, both of them are always used at the same time or staggered. And they are become known as interaction. Although, logically, we might expect that we ought to understand the plain sense if we are to understand ‎ anything else, in fact a student continually shifts from one focus to another, now adopting a top-down approach to predict the probable meaning, then moving to the bottom-up approach to check whether that is really what the writer want to tell. Christine Nuttall calls it interactive reading. P11 Both are important strategies for students. No matter what kind of activities, they have common requirements. In reading, students need not only solid language knowledge of vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, but also abundant social and cultural background knowledge and certain logical analysis ability. This is an important principal to cultivate students` abilities in English reading.4 Factors of hindering the improvement of college students` reading abilities Based on the above statements, it is not very difficult to find that English reading comprehension is a highly active and creative act. Christine Nuttall says reading is a process in which readers select, classify and interpret information according to experience, information and knowledge they have in their minds .Reading is a communicative activity between writer and reader in written form. (So, according to this view, we can make a conclusion that reading is an interactive process—as ‎ conversation is—because both reader and writer depend on one another.) P11In the past, in English reading teaching classes, teachers only emphasized on the training of language skills to enable students to understand the language structure units which is only limited to words` or sentences` understanding. They completely neglected cultivating students` abilities in reading comprehension.‎ From the book written by Chen Meimei and the other three people, some conclusions can be drawn that there are several obvious characteristics in college students` learning in English reading: first, their purposes of learning are clear. Their learning motivation is greater. They have plenty of social and life experience and a certain cultural knowledge; second, the acquisitions of native language have for a long time. Their thinking is basically mature. And they have stronger understanding abilities, thinking abilities, logical judgments and reasoning abilities; third, they learn foreign language in the environment of native language, not in the environment of target language. They acquire English and develop their abilities just depending on limited time in teaching class; fourth, their ‎ study methods are not correct enough, and levels of their knowledge of English are different; fifth, as they grow, their language acquisition device in their brains gradually decline. All these characteristics affect college students` reading comprehension.‎ Therefore, some research has been done through interview and questionnaires with 30 junior students from English department and a certain number of students in other departments. The main contents are about problems and obstacles they meet in the process of reading and how they deal with new words that they really stand in the way of comprehension.73.3%of students reflect the breadth of vocabulary knowledge affects their reading comprehension, such as small breadth of vocabulary knowledge, different understanding of polysemy.46.7% of them reflect that they will lose patient when they meet some difficult and complicated problems.46.7% of them reflect that background knowledge affects the percentage of the right answers.23.3% of them feel that there is not enough time to think because of reading speed.‎ According to the above research results and Chen Meimei and the other three people` ideas, I find that there are some obstacles ‎ which affect the improvement of college students` reading abilities:‎ ‎(1)Native language interference causes negative transfer, including phonetics interference, lexicon interference, grammar interference and pragmatics interference and so on;‎ ‎(2)Intralingual interference causes the confusion of the text structure, including overgeneralization, incomplete application of rules and cross-association, etc.‎ ‎(3)Non-linguistic interference causes the behavior error, including the attitudes toward errors and awareness of self-amendment and so on. P74-755 Solutions to getting rid of obstacles in English reading Based on what have been discussed, it is impossible to improve college students` reading abilities unless they overcome obstacles mentioned above according to college students` own characteristics.5.1 Emphasis on the cultural background knowledge For a long time, people have been working on how the cultural element affects learning of English. Anthropologists and linguists regard knowledge of cultural background and language ‎ structure as the key items. Students often ignore English culture and lack background knowledge. They have very little or even no knowledge about English speaking countries` culture. “Therefore, they could not understand or they could misunderstand some idioms. At last it will hinder them from improving reading comprehension and reading abilities.” P84 “The background knowledge is a vital factor to affect college students` abilities in reading comprehension.” P93 ‎ The studies of languages and culture indicate that language is formed and keeps developing and getting nourished gradually in the long-term social practices and real life. Language and culture are inseparable. Culture is generally defined as the total-material riches and spiritual wealth created in the process of social development. P101‎ So language and culture are interdependent and interacted. Language is the medium of culture transmitting. Without language, culture would not be possible. In the process of English reading, even though students master basic knowledge, they will inevitably make some mistake and meet some difficulties in understanding if they lack understanding of English cultural features and ignore ‎ the cultural differences between native language and target language. So, when college students learn foreign language, they should remember that learning its culture; background is not only helpful to our understanding of it but also inevitable to master it. “For instance, when we know the origin of Thanksgiving Day, we`ll have no difficulty in understanding their way of celebration with a turkey, and if we know the earlier settlers from Europe on American Continent, we’ll find no problem of understanding the common American characteristics---seeking for freedom and inpiduality, etc.” P101‎ In addition, it is necessary to pay special attention to college students mastering cultural meanings of lexicon connotation and denotation. Even though some words in different languages have the same concept, their social and cultural meanings are with strong ethnic features because of different culture in different countries. For example:‎ They were carrying sandwiches and wine in paper bags, dreaming of golden beaches and sea tides as the pray, cold spring of New York vanished behind them.‎ If students can not understand the climate in New York and ‎ Florida and their geographical location and so on, it is impossible for them to understand why the spring in New York is grey and cold, why they dream golden beaches and sea tides. And, of course, they can not comprehend their good mood and the hero`s gloomy mood, which will help students to understand the rest of the passage.‎ In a word, culture and language are closely related to each other. In teaching, teachers should emphasize both of them, teach both and mix both. “As one way of communication, reading materials reflect cultural differences through the language in written form.” P62 Therefore, students must realize the importance of cultural background knowledge. Only in this way can college students improve their language competence and achieve effective reading.5.2 Emphasis on the influence of discourse Strictly speaking, a text could consist of a single sentence, but we are more interested in texts composed of a number of sentences organized to carry a coherently structured message. “The message may be a story, a body of information, an argument and so on; and the way the meanings in a text are organized to convey the message is discourse.” P80 So, to break through the ‎ traditional modes of teaching reading, college students should pay more attention to the understanding of the discourse as well as the understanding of words and sentences. They should use discourse analysis to analyze the communicative function of a discourse, the contexture and the logical relation between paragraphs to grasp writer’s meanings.‎ What does discourse analysis mean? It is the study of how discourse is produced and organized. Discourse analysis can help readers to obtain and master lots of information which is conveyed by a discourse, and scientifically and systematically analyze the contexture, passage meanings and the relation between sentence and sentence and paragraph and paragraph. Take argumentation as an example. Chen Meimei, Rao Hui, Zhang Xicheng, Zhang Jun has pointed out that about 80% to 95% of paragraphs in an argumentation contain topic sentences to express their main ideas according to statistical data. It usually appears in the first sentence or the last sentence of a paragraph. Of course, sometimes, it may be in the middle of a paragraph. ‎ In the whole passage, the first paragraph and the last paragraph are utmost important. Take the following paragraph for ‎ example:‎ ‎“Life in 1999 will be much different from what it is today. For one thing, you will sleep later because your job will start later in the morning. Two machines will do most of your routine work for you. Also you will travel to work on a moving sidewalk. Furthermore, you will take to friends on a picture telephone. Finally, you will take longer vocation in more distant places since transportation will be so much faster and cheaper.” P27  ‎ The first sentence “Life in 1999 will be much different from what it is today.” is the topic sentence. It gives students the main idea of the paragraph. And the following sentences support the topic sentence.‎ In addition, if college students can make full use of discourse markers, it will be helpful for them to improve their reading speed and their abilities to correctly understand the theme, structure of a discourse and writer`s writing methods. Christine Nuttall has pointed out that, from the reader’s point of view, the markers fall into three main classes:‎ ‎(1)Markers which signals the sequence in which reported ‎ events occurred, such as then, first, at once, next, the following day. For example, the gusts arrived. Then the sports took place.‎ ‎(2)Markers which signal the writer`s manner of organizing the discourse, such as in conclusion, that is to say, for example, to resume, in short, we must now turn to.‎ ‎(3)Markers which indicate the writer`s view of the facts, etc. written about, such as moreover, incidentally, similarly, however, as a matter of fact, in any case, therefore, in order to, more importantly. P94‎ Therefore, mastering the discourse knowledge will help students to understand the main idea and the structure of an article and the writer`s intention, which will improve their reading abilities.5.3 Emphasis on the acquisition of lexicon In Basic Reading Skills Handbook, Harvey S. Wiener and Charles Bazerman have pointed out that lexicon is a very important factor in English reading. Reading in fast speed and efficient understanding should depend on the breadth of vocabulary knowledge. Many things, such as thinking and opinions, can be formed through lexicon. It directly affects students` correct understanding in the process of reading. So the ability to ‎ determine the meaning of vocabulary items from context is one of the most important aspects of successful reading. Through reading, college students can enlarge their breadth of vocabulary knowledge, and enhance their understanding of words and remember them firmly. [11]P5-53‎ In An Introduction to English Lexicology, Lin Chengzhang has pointed out that college students can enlarge their breadth of vocabulary knowledge through phonetics, word formation and semantics and so on in the process of lexical learning. But because of polysemy, homonymy and some other features of words, a very simple word may have different meanings in different contexts. [12]P7-283Take the following sentences for example:‎ ‎(1) He didn`t express himself very clearly, but he means that he wants your help.‎ ‎(2) In running a company, strict financial management means everything. ‎ In the first sentence, the word “mean” refers to “intend to convey sth, or signify sth”; in the second sentence, the word “mean” refers to “be of importance”.‎ In the process of reading comprehension, college students ‎ always reflect that they can not understand a sentence meaning even though the sentence structure is not complex and words are simple. For example:‎ ‎(1) They were not a little surprised at the news. ‎ Once reading the sentence, they may think that the sentence means that they were not surprised at the news at all. But, actually, it is on the opposite. It means that they were very surprised at the news. Since the phrase “not a little” means “very”.‎ ‎(2) You can`t be too careful when you drive a car. ‎ The phrase “can`t be too careful” may be understood as “should not be too careful”. In fact, it means that “the more careful, the better”‎ What`s more, students can learn words through contexts. It is very difficult for students to confirm lexical meanings if they don`t try to understand the words or phrases in the content of the whole article in the process of reading. Christine Nuttall has pointed out that an article is encoded according to two rules: grammar and meaning. P4-5 Thus, college students can guess lexical meanings with the following rules. For example:‎ ‎(1) He has gone to football practice;‎ ‎(2) He has a large practice in London. ‎ The word “practice” in these two sentences has different meanings. The former means “exercise”. The latter means “work of a doctor or lawyer”‎ When we read an article, we will find that a writer always use the following methods to help readers to figure out lexical meanings:‎ Definition: e.g. Jane is indecisive, that is, she can’t make up her mind.‎ Restatement: e.g. It must be lasting and easy to recognize, to pide, and to carry about. In other words it must be ‘durable, distinct, pisible and portable [13]P30‎ Example: e.g. After a day of hunting, Harold is ravenous. Yesterday, for example, he ate two bowls of soup, salad, a large chicken, and a piece of chocolate cake before he was finally satisfied. [14]P25 ‎ Comparison: e.g. Peter was not frugal since he spent money so freely.‎ Contrast: e.g. Some people like to walk quickly home after ‎ work, but I prefer to stroll home and look at the store windows along the way. [13]P31 ‎ Related information: e.g. Timken was now angry…Once again he flew into a rage.‎ In addition to figuring out lexical meanings according to the context, word formation is another method. Remembering some major rules of word formation is helpful. For example:‎ ‎(1) If students know affix “ped” which means “child”, and “agog” which means “leader”, it is not difficult to figure out “pedagogue” which means “leader of children”, that is “teacher”. [14]P25 ‎ ‎(2) The prefix “anti-” means “opposed to, against”. [15]P51 ‎ Lexicon is a very important factor of successful reading. Therefore, college students should pay much attention to it. So there are some words, such as antiaircraft (designed to destroy enemy aircraft), antiballistic missile (rocket designed to destroy another in the air), antibiotic (that can destroy or prevent the growth of bacteria). [15]P515.4 Reinforcement of learning motivation Findings of researches show that many college students` intensive motivation in English learning can obviously improve their reading abilities and raise the efficiency of learning. Such kind of motivation reflects their strong desires to master English .And the motivation includes learning goals, attitudes, efforts and a desire to attain the goal. A lot of researches prove that motivation and attitude is inseparable. They play a very important role in English reading. An active and strong leaning motivation and correct learning attitude will pave the way for English reading.‎ As long as college students` learning motivation is positive, they will learn autonomously. They will do their best to improve their abilities in reading comprehension in many ways. In the process of reading, they will select different reading skills and strategies to achieve understanding according to their own needs. What`s more, if their learning motivation is strong, they will make full use of their advantage, such as understanding, memory, background knowledge and abundant experiences to fully develop their analysis, judgments, inducing and reasoning abilities to raise their own reading comprehension level.5.5 Cultivation of ‎ good reading habit Dai Lin has pointed out clearly that good learning habits are the necessary premise of successful study. P93 Lots of college students complain that reading is a difficult task. It can`t give them any benefits and useful information. After an examination in reading, they often say that their reading speed is too slow; they can`t understand what the meaning of the materials is; their reading abilities are poor. If they have good reading habits, they can flexibly use various reading skills in a test to get high marks, and they can improve their reading abilities.‎ From Christine Nuttall` ideas in Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language, some conclusions can be drawn that there are several reading habits which hinder students` reading comprehension: (1).sub vocalizing (forming the sounds of the words you are reading, and even murmuring them aloud); (2).finger-pointing; (3).head movements; (4).regressions and so on. All of these are bad for them in reading. College students should aware that efficient readers do not have these habits. These habits are harmful.‎ Therefore, it is necessary for students to cultivate their ‎ good reading habits, such as skimming, scanning, silent reading.6 Training of English reading ability and skills The improvement of college students` abilities in reading comprehension can’t be isolated from the cultivation and training of reading skills and comprehension skills. In Basic Reading Skills Handbook, Harvey S. Wiener and Charles Bazerman have provided us with good advice for training of English reading ability and skills: building vocabulary, using aids to reading, understanding main ideas, finding information, interpreting what you read, writing to read. [11]Pv-vii And Chen Meimei and the other three people also have provided us some reading skills: grasping main ideas through looking through the whole passage, generalizing the theme after quickly extracting information, drawing inferences and comprehending details, learning to deducing lexical meanings. P83-88 In order to help college students to improve their reading abilities and master some reading skills, teachers should pay attention to the training of the following reading skills in reading teaching.6.1 Understanding the main ideas ‎ ‎“A piece of writing often presents many ideas, but these ‎ ideas usually relate to one important idea. In order to understand how these ideas fit together, you need to spot the main idea, which gives you an overall meaning to the reading.” [11]P143 In the process of reading, students can look through the passage and don’t need to read it word by word .They just grasp some basic knowledge. After reading and thinking, they can understand the passage. That is to say, they can generalize the main idea of the passage in their own words. If they can’t grasp the main idea, they will always neglect the important part of the passage. Thus they won’t achieve the reading goal. For example:‎ ‎“Too often young women use work as a stopgap between high school and marriage. The idea is to keep themselves afloat until Mr. Right comes along. Then they can marry and have children. Being a wife and mother is a perfectly valid occupation, but no women should allow it to cancel out her ability to be self-supporting. Life plays too many tricks. Mr. Right doesn`t come along. Mr. Right doesn`t earn enough to support the family and you have to work. You find housewifery boring and you want to work but you have no skills. The marriage doesn`t last and you have to go back to work. Your children grow up and don`t need you so much. You must be ‎ prepared” [11]P172‎ After reading, students will know that the main idea is that life does not always turn out as we hope.6.2 Generalizing the theme after quickly extracting information The theme is the soul of a passage. All the details and facts serve the theme. Thus, students can scan or skim the whole passage to extract specific information to understand the main idea. If students can concentrate on the topic sentence of every paragraph, they will grasp the main idea. Of course, sometimes the topic sentence is implied in a paragraph. And students should generalize the paragraph’s main idea by themselves. For example:‎ ‎“One hundred years ago, school teachers were expected to provide a variety of services in addition to their teaching duties and to behave themselves in an exemplary (serving as an example manner).They cared for the oil lamps, tended the fire, and supplied their students with sharp pencil .After a long day in the classroom, they were expected to spend some time every evening reading the Bible. For Women teachers, Of course, alcohol and tobacco were forbidden.‎ Which statement best expresses the main idea?‎ A、Teachers performed domestic tasks.‎ B、The teaching profession demanded total dedication.‎ C、Teachers needed the guidance of religion.‎ D、Teachers get good examples by not using tobacco and alcohol.” P85‎ After reading, students can know that there is no obvious topic sentence in the paragraph. Looking through the four choices, students will find that the choices A, C and D are details in the passage. All these details support the passage’s main ideas that the teaching profession demanded total dedication one hundred years ago. So the correct choice is B.6.3 Drawing inferences and comprehending details In the process of reading, college students must be good at analyzing, thinking, judging and reasoning according to the related information implied in a passage. That is to say, students are able to understand a passage’s implied meaning through the plain sense. At the same time, students should grasp and recognize important details, namely finding out those major facts which can express the main idea, to achieve understanding. For example:‎ John Henderson was driving home late last night from an ‎ exhausting business trip.‎ The sentence is the first sentence of a paragraph. It tells students the hero of the article, and the time “late last night”. If students carefully read it and think about it, they will infer: 1.John Henderson is a businessman, because he just finished a business trip; 2.John Henderson must be very tired since the trip was exhausting trip.‎ Therefore, reasonable inference can help students to understand an article much better. And students must remember that they should make full use of facts, analyze the given information and read between the lines to drawing reasonable inferences.‎ ‎7 Conclusion Reading is very important in learning foreign language. Efficient reading is affected by many factors. They have their own features in developing reading skills. Even though they have learned English for more than nine years, their reading abilities need to be improved. Since there are still some obstacles to hinder them from improving their abilities in reading comprehension, college students should do their best to overcome obstacles, and master and flexibly make use of reading skills. In teaching ‎ reading, teachers still play an important role to improve students` reading abilities. They should train their basic skills in reading comprehension, arouse students` studying enthusiasm, and help students to master some effective studying strategies. Reading comprehension is not an inactive activity. Language is complicated and changeable. Moreover, it is not easy to cultivate language tuition in a short time. Thus, in order to improve college students` abilities in reading comprehension, they should spare no efforts.Bibliography ‎ Sandra Silberstein. 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An Introduction to English Lexicology[M]. 武汉大学出版社，1997‎ ‎[13] 刘会民，杜光民. 如何学好《英语阅读一》[J]. 英语知识，2004，（1）‎ ‎[14] 王丹. 如何处理阅读中的词汇问题—‎ 英语专业四级阅读理解技巧谈[J]. 英语知识，2003，（4）‎ ‎[15] AS Hornby. Oxford Advantage Learner`s English-Chinese Dictionary. 4th ed[M]. The Commercial Press and Oxford University Press, 2002Acknowledgements The B.A. dissertation is accomplished under the inspiration and enlightenment of my respected supervisor Wu Yinan, who helped me a lot in shaping the idea and the framework for this paper. I am extremely indebted to him for his valuable direction and detailed revisions to my draft.‎ Besides, I will also show my gratitude to all my teachers, particularly to Lou Xixiang, who gave me a lot of useful materials in the developing of the paper.‎ And finally I want to express my gratitude to my friends and classmates who offered their kind help in various ways.‎ Without their support, the present dissertation would take much more time than it has consumed now.  ‎ ‎ ‎