The Application Of Reading Strategies In College English Reading Teaching

As a most direct and effective way of acquiring knowledge, reading has always had a prominent position in second language teaching and learning. To acquire knowledge of a foreign language by reading is often important to academic studies, professional success, and personal development. It is a major part of College English teaching, and plays an important role in developing students' English proficiency. However, the teaching of reading is not so satisfactory up to now. It remains a vexing problem for both the teacher and the student.There exists reading obstacles in students' reading, and they find it difficult to improve their reading performance. So it is necessary to do some further study in this field. Though in recent years, more and more researches have been done on it, the research on the application of reading strategies is far from enough.The present study intends to investigate the application of reading strategies among college students and its direct influence on their reading performance through quantitative research. The survey instruments in this study are the questionnaires produced by Oxford (1990) and two reading comprehension tests (pre-test, post-test). The SPSS is employed to analyze data.There are three major findings in the present study: 1) Strategies can be taught and strategy training can cultivate real autonomous learners; 2) Strategy training can be embedded into the normal classroom instruction; 3) Students' reading performance can be improved through strategy training.The findings have several implications for English reading in the Chinese college English reading context. English reading is an active mental process and in a sense, it is a kind of skill learning so teachers need considerable exposure to the concept of learning strategies as opposed to teaching strategies, in order to do a good teaching. Teachers should consider strategy training as necessary in EFL reading.