The Application Of Meta-cognitive Strategies To English Reading In Five-year Normal Schools

In the age of knowledge explosion, reading, as the most basic language ability, is the most important method of acquiring knowledge and obtaining new scientific information, at the same time, it's an important learning way for most of Chinese English learners. English reading teaching is considered the most important part of language teaching, so how to improve the students'reading peoficiency has been an important concern. In recent years, the focus of the researches has changed from"how to teach"to"how to learn"in language teaching and learning, so teachers should consider how to cultivate students'independent reading ability and think about how to make them to be the owners of learning.Research on meta-cognition in reading has been paid great attention to by language researchers since the 1970s. A lot of research has been done on meta-cognitive strategies training. In spite of their different research methodologies, most of the research results show that this kind of training is a great help in improving reading level. Most of the research abroad is done in the learning situations where English is the native language. University students are taken as subjects in a lot of the research in our country. In high schools in China, some research has also been done on meta-cognitive application in English reading. So this thesis attempts to explore a further study on meta-cognitive strategy training in the five-year normal school so as to develop the normal school students'ability of autonomous learnig.Whereas the practical situation of reading teaching in normal schools and the serious problems it caused, this thesis expounds a more suitable way to improve students'reading comprehension. Supported by metacagnition theory, this study attempts to apply metacognitive strategies instruction to English reading teaching in hope of enhancing the present reading teaching in normal schools. This study is aimed to seek the answers to the following questions: 1) Whether metacognitive strategies instruction raise students'metacognitive awareness in five-year normal schools; 2) Can metacognitive strategies instruction improve students'reading performance in five-year normal schools. The experiment was carried out in Pingyuan normal school. Two Grade Four classes (one is an experimental class, the other is a control class) were chosen for this comparative teaching experiment. Before the experiment, all the participants received a questionnaire and a pre-test in order to find out the students'metacognitive level and their reading ability. The study lasted nearly one semester. In the experiment, the experimental class (EC) received metacognitive strategies instruction in reading and the control class (CC) was taught under the traditional method. After the experiment, the participants received a post-test and an interview. The results of the tests were analyzed by the author with the SPSS 10.0 and indicated that the mean scores of the experimental class were much higher than those of the control class, and there existed significant difference between the two classes. Also, the results of the interview showed that the experimental class students'metacognitive awareness, interest and confidence in reading were all increased, and their ability of problem solving was enhanced. Therefore, comparing with the current traditional reading teaching, metacognitive strategies instruction can improve students'reading performance in normal schools.Being an experimental research on reading teaching and learning, the present study offers an experimental basis for improving five-year normal school reading teaching and learning and also enlarges the application field of metacognitive strategies instruction, therefore it carries both practical and academic significances.