Two Reading Modes in Chinese College Students’ English Reading Comprehension

Abstract

Reading comprehension remains one of the main important factors for Chinese college students’ English language learning. Research shows, however, that reading comprehension is a sophisticated process and many students have met difficulties in constructing meaning from writing context. This current study, by comparing silent reading mode and loud reading mode, attempts to find out their respective effects on Chinese college students’ reading comprehension. There was a 16-week experiment on 29 sophomores, who were divided into experimental and control groups. Data were elicited through conventional process of language experiment. Besides these quantitative data, an interview was designed to collect students’ attitudes and opinions as qualitative data. All the results indicate that silent reading-mode significantly improves participants’ reading comprehension while aloud reading-mode does not reveal the same findings.