| Reading has been one of the important means for English learners and it is also an effective way for teachers to help students' to improve their English proficiency. Reading makes a comparatively large proportion in many kinds of English tests. In recent years, how to help learners to improve their English reading ability has become one of the focuses paid attention to and studied by many scholars at home and abroad. In China, though teachers have poured out plenty of time to foster students' reading ability, it is still a difficult part for students to deal with. All that resulted from the present teaching situation. Under the condition of the traditional teaching method, namely, only paying attention to the acquisition of vocabulary and grammar, students can only grasp the basic knowledge but lack necessary reading strategies' training.Reading strategies refer to the learning strategies used by learners in the process of reading in order to comprehend reading passages. After reviewing the relevant theories about English learning strategies, reading strategies and the present situation of reading strategies' training, this thesis tried to look into the situation of non-English major students'reading strategies use and probe into the effectiveness and the feasibility of conducting the reading strategies' training in the normal class. Two research questions were hoped to answer through the two stages of study:(1) What is the situation like in terms of the reading strategy use by the first year non-English major students?(2) Can reading strategies' training effectively improve students' reading proficiency?During the first study stage, there were 256 non-English major fresh students (2008) responded to the English Reading Questionnaires. Through analyzing the valid questionnaires, the results showed that the overall situation of students' reading strategies use in reading is not very bad; students have the awareness to use strategies in reading; there is no close correlation between students' strategies' use and their gender, specialties, ages and the length of their English learning; there is correlation between students' strategies' use and their previous English scores.An eight weeks' reading strategies' training experiment was carried out in the second study stage to check its effectiveness and the feasibility. The subjects of this study were 62 first year non-English majors. They came from two natural classes, one was designed as the control group (N=29), the other was designed as the experiment group (N=33). They were taught by the same one teacher but received different teaching methods. The control group received the traditional teaching method and didn't receive any reading strategies' training. The experimental group received eight weeks' strategies' training. The two groups both took the reading ability pretest and posttest. Through analyzing the data got from the two tests, the results revealed that students' reading proficiency can be effectively improved by the reading strategies' training and it's feasible to implement strategies' training in the normal class.There are altogether five Chapters in this thesis.Chapter One briefly introduced the background of the study, the importance of reading and reading strategy, the purpose of the study and also the organization of the thesis.Chapter Two provided a theoretical basis for the study. Theories about learning strategies, reading, reading strategies and the previous studies are included.In Chapter Three, the detailed description about the research procedure was expounded. The research questions, subjects, instruments and research procedures were described in this part.Chapter Four specifically introduced the collection of the experiment data, the results and the analysis about the results obtained from the experiment.Chapter Five summarized the major findings of the study, the pedagogical implications and the limitations of the study and pointed out the suggestions for the further study.
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