英语论文网

ious 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 strategies Because 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 reading ‘‘Reading 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.[1] 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. “Language is a part of culture and also the carrier and the container of culture. Language and culture is closely related, each influencing and shaping the other. To learn a foreign language implies to learn the culture in which it is spoken.”[2] “Reading is a kind of verbal communication. The readers communicate with the author(s) through the text. In this way, culture factors are inherent to the reading act and therefore influence the readers’ control over the input (Byra met al 1994)”. In the reading process, we cannot understand or interpret a text without the influence of our previous social experience and social context in which the reading takes place. The text we read, the topic we are interested in as well as the way we approach are culturally constructed (Kress, 1989).”[3] 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.[4] 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 t