Zhang Li-ping

Abstract：At present, most of the students have difficulty in English reading, such as reading slowly, low comprehension and so on. In order to improve their reading speed and reading comprehension, this paper tries to analyze the relative reasons and find out the solution.

Key words：Reading speed; reading comprehension; English reading

中圖分类号：H319 文献标识码： A文章编号：1672-1578（2014)3-0005-01

1 Introduction

Many teachers didnt attach importance to the bad habits in English reading training process that affect both reading speed and comprehension. English reading problem takes a high proportion in test. According to the survey in English grade examination, the author found that English reading problems lose scores mostly because of the problems such as reading slowly, low comprehension, etc. This is related to not having a good reading habit.

2 Bad reading habits

2.1 Finger reading and reading one word at a time

Some students often use a finger or other stuffs to point each word when reading at a time in order to improve comprehension. Finger-reading and reading one word at a time is related to each other closely. But it makes students ignore the comprehension of main idea because it leads them to not only read more slowly but also pay more attention to the one-sided comprehension of each word.

2.2 Regressing out of habit

Regressing out of habit is an obstacle that affects speeding in fast reading. Mainly because of the three reasons: Firstly, students cant concentrate the energy in reading process. Secondly, students doubt their memory and comprehension ability and always think that they cant catch all the main idea of the passage if they read fast. And thirdly, the reading article that the students choose themselves far exceeds their reading levels. Therefore, students should concentrate the energy and strengthen self-confidence and choose the articles that are well-suited in difficulty.

2.3 Vocalizing

Some students tend to vocalize to read English passages because they think it can help to get better comprehension. Actually, it often leads to read slowly in this way. So, in order to overcome this bad habit, students must train themselves to grasp information by eyes when reading, not by sound.

3 Methods to improve English reading speed and comprehension

Those bad reading habits mentioned above are really common in English reading. Students must tamp the basic language knowledge, expand the background knowledge and read by sense group to get rid of bad habits. In addition, students must train themselves in the following ways of fast reading:

3.1 Timed reading

Timed reading is a kind of reading method that you should record the beginning and ending time and calculate the average words every minute when reading. One should choose a passage everyday, write down the beginning time, and write down the ending time after finishing reading. After a period, one should make statistics of the recorded time to get the average reading speed. However, students should deal with the relationship between reading speed and comprehension. Furthermore, during the statistics of recorded time, the length and degree of all passages should close to each other. So, the conclusion we get is more accurate. It is worth nothing that timed reading should not be long every time, five to ten minutes is all right. Because timed reading requires strong powers of concentration and the brain is easy to be tired.

3.2 Skimming

Skimming is also called reading and skipping or glancing. It means one should rapidly grasp the main idea of the passage as soon as possible. This is a very functional fast reading method. In order to improve the reading speed, students should selectively read the points of a passage, skip over the details that is not closely relative and only grasp the main idea when skimming.

One must find the topic sentence when skimming. Topic sentence often appears in the begging or ending paragraph, sometimes in the middle. One should make a comprehensive understanding of all topic sentences of each paragraph to get the general idea.

3.3 Scanning

Scanning is a fast reading method that one should rapidly find out a specific fact or a piece of particular information (such as person, matter, time, place, etc.) and not read the unrelated information. It makes readers speedily find out the required information by scanning as many contents as possible in a short time.

4 Conclusion

In a word, in order to improve the reading speed and comprehension, students should get rid of the bad habits mentioned above and mix the three reading methods together.

作者簡介：张丽萍（1983.04-），女，四川遂宁人，四川职业技术学院助教，主要从事公共英语的教学与研究。