A Study On English Reading Strategies In Senior High Schools

With the increase of interaction among nations, people have gradually developed the awareness of the importance of a foreign language as a tool for global communication. Reading is the most important purpose and also the most important means of language learning. The development of the reading ability is one of the most important goals of learning and teaching in senior high school. After three years of learning, many students don't get a high level in reading ability, even far behind other students. This problem has attracted many language researchers and language teachers'attention. Reading strategies have been found to be prominent among various factors affecting foreign language reading by researches. Reading strategies refer to strategies used by language learners aiming to improve their reading comprehension, which not only deal with some certain reading skills but also the selecting and controlling activities of carrying out a certain reading aim. It is thought that strategy use matters much with the reading effects.The purpose of this study is to investigate the characteristics of English reading strategies used by senior high school students, to detect the differences in strategy use between high and low achievement groups, and to examine the correlation between their reading strategy employment and reading proficiency, in the hope of exploring the correlation of reading strategies to reading proficiency and helping the senior high teachers to know the characteristics of the use of reading strategies of senior high students and help them to instruct the students correctly.The data are collected mainly through a written questionnaire, and partly by means of group interviews. The participants selected are from Grade Tow senior high school .A reading comprehension test randomly is selected from a Reading Contest of the school used to assess the students'English reading proficiency and to group students into three levels according to their reading scores. A self-designed 40-item questionnaire is administered to elicit data concerning students'strategy use. T-test and Pearson product moment correlations were used to analyze the data.After both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the data, the researcher yields the following research findings:1. In general, students sometimes employ English learning strategies. Among the three learning strategy categories investigated, cognitive strategies are employed the most frequently, and are followed by social strategies. The least frequently used strategies are metacognitive strategies. The characteristics of learning strategy employment may be attributable to many factors, such as the test -oriented nature of English teaching in senior...