An Experimental Study On Metacognitive Strategy Training In Junior High School English Reading Teaching

Reading as one of the ultimate goals for English foreign language learning has become the focus of many researches. Since researchers changed their attention from how to teach to how to learn, a large number of studies showed that metacognitvie strategy had positive influence on reading comprehension. But the studies abroad were most on native language or second language environment, and most of the studies in China took the college students as subjects, there were few researches on Junior high school students. So this thesis tried to study whether the metacognitive strategy training could improve junior high school students’ reading interest and reading ability.As a teacher of junior high school, the author carried out the questionnaire to the 50 students to analyze the situation of metacognitive strategy used in junior high school. In the experiments, the author selected one control class to have traditional teaching and one experimental class to take a 16-week long metacognitive strategy training in English reading. Through the interview after training and the analysis of the results of pre-test and post-test, it showed that metacognitive strategy training could improve the students’ reading interest and reading ability.This paper is divided in to 5 chapters. The writer mainly introduced the research background, the significance of this study and proposes the research questions in chapter 1. Chapter 2 was literature review. It included theories on metacognition and reading. The writer further explained the relationship between metacognitive strategies and English reading and outlined the empirical and theoretical researches on metacognitive strategy training abroad and at home in recent years. In chapter 3, taking Oxford(1990) Strategy Inventory for Language Learning as reference the writer designed a metacognitive strategy questionnaire to the 50 students from Grade 7 in No. 53 Middle School. This questionnaire was to know the frequency of students’ metacognitive strategy using and to analyze the current situation of students. There were also two tests before and after the metacognitve strategy training. After tests, the writer interviewed the subjects to investigate the change of their mastery and use of metacognitive strategies. The writer tried to prove that the metacognitive strategy training is effective to improve the students’ reading ability and interest by analyzing the students’ changes of reading plan, the attitude towards reading, reading monitoring, self-evaluation before and after metacognitive strategy training. In the fourth chapter, the writer made a detailed analysis of the results of questionnaire, tests and interviews, discussed the experimental results and analyzed the causes of the training results. Through the analysis of the results of questionnaire, it could be found that the junior high school students’ metacognitive knowledge is not rich, their metacognitive awareness is not strong enough and metacognitive strategy use frequency is not high. After the training, the students in experimental group improved obviously in the post-test than those in control group that mainly reflected in the average score and the correct rate improvement. The students in experimental group did better in the questions on grasping the author’s intention and key words, guessing new words, understanding the details after metacognitive strategy training. This showed that the students in the experimental group made progress in using of metacognitive strategies. In the interviews, the students in experimental group said that they had more understanding on metacognitive strategies after training and their reading had become more planned; they could make an objective assessment of their reading which made them feel more confident; they were not afraid of reading English and became interested in English reading. Chapter 5 is mainly about the findings of this study, the limitations and suggestions for the future study.So, it is essential to take metacognitive strategy training in reading in junior high school. It can not only arouse the students’ interest in English reading, but also help students to read in a planned way and enhance their reading ability. This study can give the teachers of junior high school some suggestions in their reading teaching. The teacher should improve their own metacognitive awareness and pay more attention to the strategy training to improve the English ability of students.