I.Features of Teaching Reading Comprehension

Reading is a psychological process during which readers construct meanings in their minds by recognizing and understanding the written codes that convey the writer's ideas. It is a dynamic and cognitive process involving readers' continuous assumptions, confirmations, imagination and inferences. Among the basic language skills, reading is an important source of information and an efficient way for students to learn from written language. The teaching of reading has always been given great prominence in China's foreign language teaching.

(I) Levels of reading comprehension

Reading competence is reflected in reading comprehension and reading speed. Reading comprehension is a psychological process during which readers, with the purpose of getting information, employ their language knowledge and life experience to understand the contents and make inferences and thus grasp the deep implications of the written material, as well as the writer's viewpoints and purpose. There are four levels of reading comprehension: literal, interpretive, evaluative and appreciative. The first level is literal comprehension, in which readers use their language knowledge to identify and understand the information explicitly stated in the text. Interpretive comprehension is reading to find out the implied meaning by analyzing, summarizing and inferring from the information directly presented. This requires the combination of readers' language competence, background knowledge and inference skills. Evaluative comprehension allows readers to analyse and evaluate a passage with the help of their own knowledge and values. Appreciative comprehension allows readers to gain an understanding of the theme and writing skills of the text on the basis of their emotions and hobbies, etc. Evaluative comprehension and appreciative comprehension are higher levels of understanding. They are the results of the interaction between readers' reading comprehension and their cultural background knowledge, and can only be achieved after literal and inferred comprehension.

(II) Reading models

The focus of research on reading theory has shifted from linguistic to extra-linguistic factors, then to a combination of both. Three models of reading have been developed over time: the bottom-up model, the top-down model and the interactive model.

1.Bottom-up model

According to the bottom-up model, also called the text-based model, reading process moves from a reader's recognition of the smallest units (letters and words) to the understanding of larger ones like phrases, sentences, paragraphs and then whole passages. In this process, the reader decodes the texts via recognizing words, sentences and paragraphs, and then builds up an understanding of the whole text based on their lexical and grammatical knowledge.

2.Top-down model

The top-down model is also called the schema-based model. This model requires conceptual and background knowledge and emphasizes the significant role of a reader's previous knowledge and experience with the text. The whole reading process begins with hypotheses and predictions, which the reader tries to verify and adjust. This model is thus regarded as an interactive process between reader and text, or reader and writer.

3.Interactive model

Both the bottom-up and top-down model regard reading as a unidirectional transmission of information. However, reading requires not only linguistic knowledge such as vocabulary and grammar, but also extra-linguistic knowledge such as experience and background knowledge. In the interactive model, the bottom-up and top-down model interact with each other and take place at the same time in reading, incorporating simultaneously both visual and non-visual information. In other words, the human brain both makes predictions about the text for general comprehension through pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and semantics, and with the help of previous knowledge, hypothesizes, infers and consistently verifies and confirms assumptions and predictions by reading the visual information. Using both bottom-up and top-down models appropriately will make it possible to increase comprehension. Needless to say, readers revise their predictions as they read in an effort to understand a text correctly.

According to schema theory, reading is a complicated process between writers' texts and readers' prior background knowledge or memory schemata, rather than a unidirectional transmission from writer to reader. Schemata can be divided into two, three or four types. The two types consist of content schema and form schema; the three types of language schema, content schema and form schema; and in the four-type schema, reader knowledge structure can be divided into language schema, content schema, form schema and strategy schema. The content of teaching reading can thus be categorized into: language knowledge (vocabulary, grammar, etc.) ; background knowledge and text content; discourse structure (the transmission and coherence of information) ; genre structure (narrative, expositive, argumentative, etc.) ; and learning strategies (prediction, memorization technique, etc.) .

(III) Reading difficulties

The main difficulties for Chinese students in reading English are a combination of the kind of reading materials and the skills of the learners themselves.

1.Reading materials

Written language is more formal than spoken language, with more complex structures and a larger vocabulary. There are, sometimes, a lot of new or uncommon words which readers may not be able to guess from the context. Therefore, readers have to “decode” their meanings via their language knowledge and reading strategies or the dictionary. This creates difficulties for learners trying to advance reading comprehension and reading speed.

2.Learners

Learners' limited language knowledge, background knowledge, interest, reading strategies, skills, habits, etc. may cause difficulties for reading comprehension.

A lack of necessary language knowledge hinders readers from obtaining the basic meaning of the reading material. For example, a shortage of vocabulary and unfamiliarity with sentence structures may impede the decoding and thus comprehension of the text. An absence of background knowledge may prevent readers from getting the deep meaning beyond the text. Not being interested in reading would most likely influence reading efficiency as the motivation to actively construct meaning from the text is lacking. Without the help of reading strategies and reading skills such as recognition, prediction, judgment, inference, induction, etc, readers may have difficulties processing information and thus may not improve reading comprehension and reading speed. Bad reading habits such as finger reading, repeated reading and translation reading may also have a negative effect on reading speed or reading comprehension.

(IV) Reading strategies

Reading strategies are methods or procedures students choose and apply consciously for the purpose of better understanding what they are reading. The following are some of the common reading strategies:

●Syntax analysis. Analyse the syntax of sentences in a paragraph to clarify the meaning of the paragraph.

●Schema-building. Make use of background knowledge (schema) to make connections with the text and thus gain a better understanding of it.

●Selected attention. Sort out and discard irrelevant information and remain focused on the most important information.

●Vocabulary strategies. Contextual redefinition: guess the meaning of unknown or unclear words by seeking clues from the context, word formation, etc.; skip the unknown words, phrases, concept, etc. and read on instead of guessing their meaning or searching in the dictionary.

●Meta-cognitive strategies. Choose and apply reading strategies flexibly according to different reading purposes and text genres.

●Directed reading-thinking activity (DRTA) . Make inferences and judgment about the content or perspective of the text based on given information (signal words like “but”, “so”, “for example”, etc.) or story line, and identify the reasons these conclusions are reached; predict, imagine and make up for the missing information with the help of common knowledge and scattered information; evaluate previous predictions after reading and refine them if necessary.

●Predict /Locate /Add /Note (PLAN) . Regard reading as an entirety and adopt the top-down model. Predict content of the text based on previous knowledge and experience; locate familiar and unfamiliar words and concepts; add new information to previous knowledge; note how new information can be applied to new tasks.

●Identifying fact and opinion. Distinguish fact from opinion in order to make sense of the text and improve comprehension.

●Charting text structure. Analyse the structures of texts of different genres by seeking structural clues.

II.Methods for Teaching Reading Comprehension

(I) Teaching objectives

According to the objectives for reading in the National Curriculum Standards, students should be able to:

●understand words with the aid of pictures;

●read and recognize all words studied (when pointing to objects) ;

●understand short and simple directions and instructions in textbooks;

●understand short stories and other simple written materials and get the main ideas;

●understand simple stories or short passages with the aid of pictures and form the habit of reading for sense-groups;

●understand simple informal letters;

●understand reading materials of common genres;

●understand information expressed in simple texts like greeting cards;

●understand simple written instructions and carry out learning activities;

●understand and explain the information in pictures or tables;

●understand the order of events and behaviors of characters in simple reading materials;

●understand the logical relationships between each sentence in a paragraph;

●understand the theme of a text and the purpose of the writer;

●understand and appreciate some simple classical English poems;

●understand different viewpoints and attitudes in the reading material;

●guess the meaning of new words from the context;

●infer the meaning of new words from the context and word formation rules;

●predict how stories develop according to the plot;

●use appropriate reading strategies to find information according to different reading purposes;

●apply proper reading strategies for different reading purposes;

●seek and deal with the information from the Internet or electronic reading materials to complete study tasks;

●read texts correctly and fluently;

●use dictionaries and other reference material to carry out reading;

●gather information via various resources;

●understand complex and long sentences by analyzing sentence structures;

●infer the meaning of new words from the context and sentence structures;

●use the clues from context to aid understanding;

●pick out the main ideas in texts and take notes of key points;

●pick out related information in the text and understand the main idea;

●pick out the main ideas in texts and understand the plot of the story and predict its development and possible endings;

●select and reorganize the information in simple reading materials;

●recognize the features of different types of texts;

●appreciate simple literature works with the teacher's help.

(II) Teaching approaches

There are three approaches for teaching reading corresponding to each of the reading models: the bottom-up approach, the top-down approach and the interactive-compensatory approach.

1.The bottom-up approach

In the bottom up reading model, readers decode words, phrases and sentences to gain an understanding of the whole paragraph and text. Therefore, the bottom-up teaching approach puts more focus on the teaching of vocabulary, including the explanation of new words before reading and analysis of word usages during reading. Some research indicates that students from this teaching approach are more used to analytical reading which starts from and arrives at text-decoding only and does not lead to deeper comprehension.

2.The top-down approach

According to the top-down reading model, reading is a process during which a reader's previous knowledge and the reading materials interact with each other. The top-down teaching approach, therefore, advocates the leading-in of background knowledge in the teaching process. Teachers help students to predict the content of the text, check and verify their predictions and make new ones if necessary, with the aid of all their knowledge relevant to the topic, text structure, context and cultural background of the reading material.

3.The interactive-compensatory approach

According to the interactive reading model, reading is a complicated and active psychological process during which readers experience, predict, verify and confirm written information on the basis of their own knowledge and experience. It is also a communicative interaction between readers and writers through discourse. Therefore, the emphases of the interactive-compensatory teaching approach not only include background information and prediction from the context, but also the student's ability to decode words and phrases. It includes also a focus on both the visual and non-visual information in the reading process. Visual information is gained directly from the printed page, while non-visual information comes from the reader's entire knowledge system, including social and cultural background knowledge, information relevant to the reading material, personal experience, common sense, logic and language knowledge, etc. In short, the interactive-compensatory approach has come to be regarded as a more scientifically sound approach to teaching.

4.Three-stage approach for teaching reading

The three-stage approach is commonly used in the teaching of elementary /junior middle school in China. It can be categorized as a top-down approach or interactive-compensatory approach, depending on the types of reading material and the teaching activities teachers design. The three stages are pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading. The following are the specific teaching activities:

1) Pre-reading

Pre-reading means preparation for reading. The main tasks for teachers in the pre-reading stage are to clarify the reading purposes and arrange reading tasks. Teachers should lead students to the topic, arouse their interest, present key words and sentences, and introduce background information about the topic to activate relevant schemata and eliminate any cultural barriers. Alternatively, students can make predictions about the theme or the content, which they can adjust or verify in the reading process.

2) While-reading

Most reading activities are carried out during the while-reading stage, of which the main tasks for students are to understand the text and learn reading strategies and skills. With the teachers' help, students can skim the text for general ideas; scan for specific information; sequence the events; answer factual and inference questions; guess the meanings of new words from context; infer the writer's meaning; identify the text genres; generalize main ideas of paragraphs; and analyse the features of text structures and writing styles.

3) Post-reading

Teachers and students usually go beyond the text in the post-reading stage. Some evaluative or application activities are carried out to consolidate understanding based on what students have read, such as retelling, discussion, role playing, storytelling, summarizing, rewriting, etc.

(III) Reading skills and skills training

Reading skills are the strategies readers apply unconsciously and habitually while reading. According to the National Curriculum Standards, there are frequently-used reading skills for students in elementary and junior education. For example, students can guess the meaning of new words from word formation rules or explanations, or from their structural or logical relationships to the other words in the context; they can obtain the main idea of a paragraph by locating the topic sentences and distinguishing them from the detailed sentences; they can grasp the main idea of the passage via seeking major facts or specific information; and they can also deduce a writer's perspective and intentions by employing simple or complicated inference methods.

Reading skills, which are unconscious behavior, are different from reading strategies. If a learner has unconsciously used a strategy to get information, understand texts and complete tasks, he /she has mastered the learning skill. In terms of reading, guessing the meaning of words is a vocabulary strategy (as seen above) , as well as a reading skill. Readers can read the context before deciding if it is necessary to guess the meaning of new words.

(IV) Activities for teaching reading

1.Pre-reading activities

Pre-reading activities are preparatory activities which include activating students' reading motivation; organizing students to predict the reading content; providing them background knowledge about the topic; presenting new words within context; and clearing up linguistic and cultural barriers. Predicting the upcoming content is a major part of pre-reading activities. In order to train students' prediction skills, teachers can design, according to the teaching material, one or two activities to activate their knowledge about the topic. For example, teachers can ask students to brainstorm as many relevant ideas as possible within a limited time, and then collect the ideas to make predictions about the reading content. They can verify their predictions by comparing them with the content after reading.

Questions and answers between teachers and students is a popular pre-reading activity in which teachers design questions relevant to the topic to activate students' schema and background knowledge. Brainstorming is another commonly-used pre-reading activity. Usually, teachers present key words, topics or questions, and students answer individually or in groups after discussion. Brainstorming can also activate background information and help learners to predict possible content in the texts. Prediction skills can also be trained by looking at pictures. For instance, teachers can first present students the beginning, ending and key parts of the story through pictures. Then, students can make predictions on how the story begins, develops and ends according to the pictures, and then describe the pictures one by one in their own words. After that, students can verify their predictions by comparing them with the text.

2.While-reading activities

The main tasks of the while-reading stage are to understand the texts and practise reading skills. The activities include skimming, scanning, structuring texts, arranging events in order, answering factual and inference questions, guessing the meaning of new words from context, and inferring writers' ideas.

(1) Skimming

Skimming is skipping lines while reading and picking out key words, sentences and main ideas through chunks of text rather than reading word for word. Being interrupted by new words or details will prevent readers from getting the general idea of the text. There are many ways to practise skimming, such as giving a title to a text after reading, writing a summary for a paragraph or text, or matching the topics with chunks of texts.

(2) Scanning

Scanning is fast reading to find specific information such as names of people or works, data, time, place, events, etc. Students can practise their scanning skills by; for example, finding the specific information within the given time; filling the chart with the right information; answering multiple choice questions; and completing the missing information based on the text.

(3) Questioning, explaining and generalizing

Teachers should always remind students to question, explain and generalize what they have read. Various skills can be developed in this process. For example, teachers can ask questions like “What did the word at the bottom of page 4 mean? ” or “What did the author mean when he said …? ” if they want to develop students' abilities to question and explain. If they want to develop students' generalizing ability, they can ask questions like “What was the problem? ”, “What was the solution? ”, “What was the cause? ”, “What were the effects? ”, or “What was the order of the events? ”. Students can find the answer in the context.

(4) Recognizing substitutional words

After students have learnt the substitutional function of this, that, it, one, these, those, etc., teachers can design exercises to practise them. For example, students can find the words which were substituted and explain their functions.

3.Post-reading activities

Reading comprehension is usually followed by post-reading activities such as discussion or debate on one or several topics or questions. These activities, which are supposed to consolidate the effects of reading, include retelling, discussion, debate, story-telling, description of things or one's experience, etc. As important forms of output, post-reading activities process, transfer and internalize the information students have got from reading. Not only can they check students' understanding of the text, they can also make students reflect on relevant issues individually. In short, post-reading activities play an important part in developing students' critical thinking skills.

(1) Retelling

Students will have a deeper understanding of the text, and consolidate key words and sentences through retelling. Text can be retold in the order of time, space, structure or importance, etc. In this way, both students' reading and speaking skills can be developed.

(2) Discussion and debate.

Discussion is an efficient way for students to think and express themselves in English. It is important that teachers choose issues that are relevant to the text content and can arouse students' interest. While discussing, students can ask questions to debate with and correct errors for each other, and they don't have to come to an agreement. After the discussion, each group can choose a representative to express their ideas before the teacher makes a conclusion and compares the different opinions. Discussion is an important form of output, and it is also the main approach to developing students' logical and divergent thinking.

(3) Brief writing

As the name implies, brief writing is to rewrite the text briefly. Students can condense the text or make a gist statement about the content with key words and sentences after they fully understand the content and grasp the theme of the text. In this way, students' generalizing ability, as well as their abilities to write single sentences, paragraphs and discourse can be well trained and developed.

(4) Imitative writing

Imitative writing is to write in a way that is similar to the text, or more specifically, to the genre, the structure or the style of the text. Students can improve their writing skills, and practise the key words and sentences they have just learned at the same time. This is a good way to help students strengthen their ability to apply the knowledge they have learned.