Many students know reading helps to understand the overall ideas of a passage or an article. The importance of reading is self-evident. The reading class needs the enthusiasm of the students and active participation of the students. If the students are lack of reading initiatives, the reading results will not be satisfactory. How to motivate the initiatives to do reading is the key element to guarantee the success of teaching.

The teachers who teach mandarin Chinese know that there are two factors which affect the initiatives of the reading of the students. The factors are the fitness of the teaching materials and the teaching skills of the teachers. The fitness of the teaching materials includes the enjoyment of the selection of the teaching materials as well as the degree of the difficulty of the target language. The fitness of the teaching materials can be adjusted by the teachers. The same teaching materials can have different teaching results according to different teachers. Thus, ht second factor, the teaching skills of the teachers play a much more important role in the teaching process.

There are several methods which can help to motivate the students to do reading and improve the efficiency of reading assignments of the teachers. The first method is to praise the students at a proper time. The teachers should be sensitive to the progress of the students, and proper praise will motivate the initiatives of the students. The second method is to specify the reading aim for the students. Only in this way can the students know clearly whether the aims have been achieved. The third method is to provide background information to reduce the difficulty in the reading process as well as improve the efficiency of the reading assignments. The fourth is to utilize the teaching materials which can be understood better. The fifth is to divide the long passage into sections to complete. The sixth is to utilize suitable check questions to test the levels of the students.

When the foreign students learn Mandarin Chinese in China, they should adopt suitable methods to improve the speed and accuracy of the test. The teaching aim is to make the students learn something and make progress. The teaching is not a process in which the teachers show off the knowledge or get the students stuck in the difficulty. The combination of the skills of the teachers and proper reduce of the difficulty of the teaching materials can motivate the students to do the reading more actively and efficiently.