LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 21:12 December 2021
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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Chinese Students Self-Perceived Reading Ability and
Its Implication to the Teaching of Critical Reading

Xizhe Zhang

Abstract

Reading skill is one of the basic skills a learner should develop to function as a competent learner. This enables a student to feel successful, as s/he can access information and be oriented on what is going on in this fast-changing world. For foreign students, like Chinese, an ability to read and comprehend a text is crucial for success but how much comprehension they know seems to be a big question that needs to be answered especially if the focus is about reading critically (Waring & Nation, 2004). This paper emphasizes on the importance of students’ perceived reading ability and its implication to teaching critical reading because often we read depending on our purpose. As well, there are different types of readers, competent readers who normally know what information they are looking for and those who need more time for understanding the information. To teach critical reading, therefore, students should be competent readers as they are likely to be equipped with understanding implicit messages when they interact with the text.

Keywords: Chinese students, Critical reading, critical reading ability, perceived reading ability, reading

Introduction

Essentially, reading is one of the most important parts of learning as learners develop their other learning skills. In addition, reading develops readers' intellectual and affective processes which deal with reasoning, inferences, empathy, and critical thinking.

The aim of critical reading is to help students improve their understanding through different texts exposure. To comprehend a text, students are required not only to synthesize the relationship of the spelling pattern to the sound pattern of the written language but also to acquire the vocabulary needed for higher text comprehension level (Waring & Nation, 2004). As Makau (1990) argued, a student with good comprehension level should possess the following abilities: to understand information being read, know the spirit of the message, and have an ability to analyze and evaluate the meaning beyond the text. In other words, students need to be able to think critically not only on what they hear but what they read. Reading critically is important as this allows learners to critique the text and understand the disposition or orientations of information based on its factuality or biases (Freebody & Luke, 1990; Aghajani & Gholamrezapour, 2019), the skill that the 21st century learners need to possess especially when it is in English.

Literature Review
Reading and reading comprehension revisited

Reading is an interactive process consisting of inferring, knowing correct sounds and comprehension (Catts & Kamhi, 2005). Being able to use these skills in a certain reading environment facilitates a reader's good comprehension of what s/he reads. To be a successful reader can be determined by these different elements, reading attitude, reading purpose, prior knowledge about the text, textual structure and vocabulary knowledge in which comprehension is determined by the interaction of the reader with the text (Yildiz et. al, 2010).

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Xizhe Zhang
Assumption University, Thailand
xiaozhe3233@gmail.com
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