Effective reading for senior high schools in Taiwan

Abstract

Reading has always received a great deal of attention at both junior and senior high schools in Taiwan. However, reading ability of English after six years’ learning is not satisfactory. The main problem is that students do not read for the main idea nor for the relationships between sentences. In addition, English reading skills, even at the college level, are limited to referring to the dictionary and analyzing sentence structures. The purpose of the present study is to explore this area; in particular, to determine the causes of and to provide solutions to the problem of reading difficulty by conducting a content analysis. This study focuses on a content analysis in four areas: (1) Analysis of reading comprehension questions, (2) analysis of gradation of readability, (3) analysis of gradation of structures, and (4) comparison of cohesive ties between Chinese and English written texts using similar topics. The text samples to be examined included two areas: (1) Book Six of The Standard English Textbook. This is the final volume of the series currently prescribed for senior high schools in Taiwan, and (2) three texts written in Chinese and English, with similar topics. It is hoped that some implications will be drawn from this study for improving the effectiveness of teaching reading in English at the secondary level in Taiwan.

Date of Award	1992
Original language	English