How to improve Students Reading Comprehension

Reading is one of the important skills in English learning. Its purpose is to enlarge their vocabulary and familiarize themselves with background information about English and to cultivate（培養） students' careful observation and their logic thinking. What is more, it is to improve students' comprehension. I have tried to train my students in the following ways： skimming and scanning, author's viewpoint, structure of the passage, structure of paragraphs, students' anticipation, punctuation and summarizing.

　　1. Skimming and Scanning Before starting to read a passage in detail, I first ask the students to take a moment to preview the passage. Read quickly, without pausing to study the details. This is called skim reading. The students ask them to have these in mind： for which the passage was written, what type of passage it is, what the purpose and attitude of the author is and what the style of the article is. After having skimmed the passage, the students can study the passage in more detail, reading more slowly and carefully and looking for specific information that the questions are concerned with. This is called scanning. When students do the scanning, I ask them to read without any sound, to notice only the key words and not to pay too much attention to the new words but to pay the sense group and the main meaning of the sentence. Especially pay attention to the first sentence and the last sentence of the paragraph.

　　2. The author‘s viewpoint

　　In reading a passage I ask the students to makes guesses about the position of the author. Is the author neutral or does the author show his own opinion. The author often shows his opinion either by adding certain phrases or by adding a value to a word. I let the students to pay more attention to these words that the author can add, like luckily, unfortunately to show that he is pleased or not pleased with something. He can also add words, which show his surprise, regret or other emotions, for example surprisingly, to shock, unexpectedly, regrettably, pity, desirable, to be disappointed, etc. The author may also use words to indicate the level of certainty, for example： certain, obviously, undoubtedly, naturally, always, often, likely, probably, maybe, unlikely, hardly, rarely, never, etc. Another possibility is that the author adds words to comment on more or less objective facts.

　　3. The structure of the passage

　　I let the students know that the structure of a passages mostly with a title and sometimes a subtitle. After that, the introduction and the body followed by a conclusion or summary. An important aspect of reading is prediction. The better the student can predict what he or she is going to read, the faster and more effective he or she will read. The prediction process begins with the title. The introduction mostly informs the student about what he can expect. The body consists of paragraphs. Each paragraph deals with one aspect of the subject matter. Paragraphs are linked in a logical way； and the conclusion puts the subject matter in the right perspective. I asked the students' to form the main idea of the passage by putting the topic sentence of every paragraph.

　　4. The structure of paragraphs

　　I tell the students that a paragraph is a group of sentences. A typical paragraph consists of three parts. The first sentence usually contains the topic sentence, which is the heart of the paragraph. The topic sentence contains the new aspect of the subject of the passage. The second part of the paragraph contains sentences, which develop the aspect. These sentences may contain arguments, explanations, details, examples, and other supporting evidence. The last sentence of a paragraph is often a summary of the paragraph or a linking sentence to the next paragraph. So we can get a good impression of the contents of the paragraph by the structure.

　　5. Students' Anticipation（推測）

　　I let students know that even if you have a wide and flexible vocabulary you will encounter words of which they do not know the meaning. Very often there is not enough time to look up all those words in a dictionary. This means that students should be able to guess the meaning of the word. This is often possible if the student understands the relationships between words in meaning and form. I ask the student to notice the word formation if they meet new words. From the roots and affixes and conversion and compounding, they learn to try to guess the meaning of the word according to the content.

　　To make a good guess at the meaning of the word, I ask students to pay attention to the clues； indications that help him find that meaning. If you meet new words and try to find if there are synonyms and repeated ideas of the new words. I teach students to follow these steps： 1） Determine the word class, i.e. a verb, a noun, an adjective, an adverb, etc. 2） Determine its function in the sentence, i.e. is it an attributive or an adverbial？ 3） Contextual clues, is the context in which we find this word positive or negative； what does the context tell us about the word？ 4） Word formations, is there any relation between this word and a word that is familiar to you？ 5） Guess the eventual meaning of the word logically and reasonably.

　　6. Punctuation

　　I teach the students to know punctuation is partly based on grammar. For example, commas are often used to separate clauses. If the student understands the meaning and usage of punctuation marks, it will be easier to understand the grammatical structures. Punctuation marks also indicate how the author wants the student to interpret a piece of passage. For example, if the author puts something in brackets, the part of the sentence should be interpreted as an addition to the sentence. Sometimes the parentheses indicate the author's point of view.

　　7. Summarizing

　　We know that it is very difficult to remember the complete contents of long passages. For that reason it is often advisable to make notes of information in the passage that is essential for the student. The result is a short outline of the passage containing all aspects of the passage. In this way students can grasp the main ideas of the passage. I ask the students to follow these steps： 1） Familiarize（熟習） with the material. After students have read the passage or a section of it, they can start summarizing. The length of the section read through depends on the structure and the complexity（複襍） of the passage. 2） Select important information. I ask the students to go through each paragraph, sentence by sentence, asking themselves which information is absolutely essential to the argument. They should point out complete sentences as much as possible. An alternative is to underline or highlight important sentences or phrases. Pay attention to these important points： author, title, reason why the passage was written, purpose, theme, key words, link words, all major aspects, explanations, author‘s opinion. Less important points： introduction, summary, repetition, examples, important figures and dates. 3） Paraphrase the information. I ask the students to point out the information of the previous step in their own words. And writing down information in their own words forces them to completely understand what they are writing down. They should try to shorten long and complex sentences into much shorter ones. 4） Insert links between sentences and paragraphs. Let students make sure that the connection between sentences is clear and logical and that each group of sentences smoothly fit in one paragraph. 5） Adjust the length of the summary. If they have to make a summary as part of an assignment and they are assigned a maximum number of words, count the words and leave out information that is not essential or add important information.

　　Through the training of the reading skills of skimming and scanning, author's viewpoint, structure of passages, structure of paragraphs, students', anticipation, punctuation, and summarizing, students know the steps of how to understand a passage and particularly how to deal with the comprehension questions in the examination. But we know reading is a practise of long period and we must have a lot of practice. In order to cultivate the reading ability, students need knowledge of grammar, a good master of vocabulary, a good ability of analysis and a good memory as well. So we must try to train the students enlarge their vocabulary, the skills of reading, broaden their background knowledge and cultivate the ability of question analysis and resolution. Only in this way can we raise the student's comprehension ability