Improving College Students＇ Language Applying Competence in the Teaching of Reading

College English teaching aims to cultivate the students＇ language applying competence, to help them broaden their mind, to absorb in foreign cultural essence and to improve cultural accomplishment. For college students, acquiring reading comprehension ability plays an essential part in understanding cultural distinctions and communicating effectively. However, the truth is that their reading comprehension ability and language applying competence prove not very optimistic. Therefore, the Present paper gives some insight to teachers on how reading English should be taught more effectively to college students.

The Impact of Collaborative Reading on Iranian EFL Learners Development of Reading Comprehension

This research was carried out in Iranian EFL （English as a foreign language） reading comprehension classes in an attempt to answer three research questions： （1） Does collaborative reading lead to greater comprehension of a text than private reading？; （2） If so, what strategies are used by the students during collaborative reading？; and （3） In what ways might these strategies contribute to the higher level of comprehension？. A quasi-experimental design was used to answer the first question. The participants were pre-tested and streamed into two classes of equal reading comprehension abilities. The intervention consisted of four texts of equal length, comprising two rated in a pilot study as conceptually difficult/linguistically easy, and two rated as conceptually easy/linguistically difficult. The subjects in each class were involved in reading the two types of texts collaboratively and privately for four sessions. After reading the text, the subjects were asked to answer in writing 10 comprehension questions. Collaborative reading resulted in consistently and significantly higher scores than private reading for all four texts. Qualitative methods were employed to answer the last two questions. Group interactions during collaborative reading were tape recorded and transcribed, and 10 students selected at random from the two classes were interviewed in depth. Analysis of the group interaction transcripts revealed that the participants were using five major strategies in co-constructing meaning from the texts. These strategies included brainstorming, clarifying the language, summarizing, paraphrasing, and interaction management. Other minor （i.e., infrequent） strategies were also identified, such as making PCU/NCU （positive/negative claim to understand）, eliciting confirmation, and confirming.

Cooperative Learning Makes Extensive Reading More Enjoyable

In the field of L2 （second language） reading, scholars generally agree that ER （extensive reading） improves L2 learners＇ reading speed and comprehension and enriches their L2 vocabulary （Grabe ＆ Stoller, 1997）. This teacher-inquiry type of paper presents a practical suggestion for supplementing ER activity with the element of CL （cooperative learning）. ER, theoretically speaking, focuses on the solitary task of silent reading. The CL technique used in this study was a book-talk activity. Forty-five freshmen from a course of children and young adult literatures were required to read at least 20 English books throughout a semester. CL was added to facilitate students＇ ER in young adult literature. After a semester, short-answer questions were asked regarding students＇ comments on ER as well as CL. Students overall agreed that when ER is supplemented with CL, reading in an L2 seems to be less intimidating.

Existing Problems and Solutions on Rural Primary School Language Education

At present,there are still many problems in language teaching in rural primary schools,which will affect the quality of teaching if we don't pay much attention to them.This article focuses on the existing flaws in current language teaching and provides some solutions.

How to Read Body Language

All of us communicate without words. We gesture with eyebrowsor a hand. We change our positions in a chair. Usually we don’t thinkour body movements mean anything. But researchers have found thatour bodies have a language, just as our words do. The study of body language is called kinesics (kin-E-sics).

PROBE INTO THE ROLE OF ANGLO-AMERICAN LITERATURE READING IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Traditionally, literary reading is regarded as a practicalmeans to stimulate the interest of EFL students in their study ofEnglish to accelerate the development of their L2 acquisition;literary works are considered a prime resource of linguistic inputto heighten the quality of learners’ target language. Yet, the re-search findings from this study indicate that such linguistic inputcannot effectively benefit the English majors when their L2 is notwell developed to cope efficaciously with such readers. In addi-tion, research findings also indicate that many literary wordsand phrases related to another cultural and social background notonly intensify the obstacles to proper comprehension but alsolimit opportunity for practical application of this sort of linguis-tic input in the social milieu where the learners live. Therefore,how to cope with literary works in language learning and whatsort of linguistic input that can effectively stimulate the develop-ment of learners’ L2 acquisition in their own social environmentneed to be explored.

NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS: AN EXCELLENT SUPPLEMENT TO EXTENSIVE READING IN LANGUAGE LEARNING

Introduction Extensive Reading, as the name indicates, is a guide for students into the vast sea of knowledge. Reading demonstrates to students that there is no end in learning knowledge. However, reading and language learning based on textbooks is far from enough because the knowledge from them is too narrow, the vocabulary is too limited and the contents are not current enough in these times of information exchange. Throughout my teaching experiments, I have found that newspaper clippings can become a very good way to bring more benefits to students’ learning than I expected. It can broaden the students’ horizons,