A Study On The Cultivation Of Metacognitive Strategies In Senior Students’ English Reading Based On Think-aloud Approach

Reading is one of the five language skills in foreign language teaching process.As a great way of language input,students’ reading ability is stressed in high schools.Nevertheless,some problems still exist in the teaching process of English reading in China.The main reason is that most English teaching process in Chinese English classes focuses on the outcome rather than the process.When carrying out word and grammar teaching,most teachers adopt mechanical and programmed teaching methods,overlooking the guidance on students’ reading strategies.Therefore,it’s difficult for teachers to help students improve their reading ability.Successful English reading depends largely on the extent to which students’ motivation and initiative are activated in reading in order to make sure that students can better understand and interact with reading materials.Metacognitive strategies theory advocates planning language learning,paying selective attention,monitoring learning process and assessing learning results in language acquisition.The think-aloud approach means that the subject speaks or writes the real thought in the mind at any time during the experiment.Students can not only understand their specific ideas and strategies they adopt during the reading process,but also compare their ideas with the correct answers after reading.Teachers can then give proper intervention to students’ reading process and reading strategies.Therefore,this study hopes to develop senior high school students’ metacognitive strategies in English reading and improve their English reading ability,thus increasing the students’ English reading marks.Some effective suggestions for related research are also put forward,which can provide a scientific theoretical guidance for the subsequent English reading teaching process in senior high schools in China.This study adopts think-aloud approach and interview to answer the following three questions:(1)What do the students know about the metacognitive strategies in English reading comprehension before the experiment?(2)How do the students use metacognitive strategies in English reading comprehension after the experiment?(3)What is the influence of metacognitive strategies training based on think-aloud approach on senior students’ English reading marks and English reading attitude?In this study,the author selects 14 senior one students from a senior high school in Laixi,Qingdao to conduct a 2-month study regarding the cultivation of English reading metacognitive strategies.After analyzing the experiment data,the results are as follows:(1)The students know little about the metacognitiave strategy in English reading comprehension before the experiment.However,concerning the four sub-strategies,namely planning strategy,selective attention,monitor strategy,and assessment strategy,the students who have a higher English reading ability usually apply these strategies unconsciously.By comparison,the students with a lower English reading ability rarely adopt the metacognitive strategies when they are doing English reading comprehension,with only several of them using monitor strategy and assessment strategy occasionally.(2)Through the two-month teaching intervention based on the think-aloud approach,the students’ with a higher reading ability remain good performance in their reading process.But compared with their unconscious use of the metacognitive strategies before the experiment,they now can more consciously adopt the metacognitive strategies to address the problems they encounter during the reading process.By comparison,the students with a lower English reading ability see a big change in the application of the metacognitive strategies while finishing the reading comprehension part.They have less negative thoughts and use more metacognitive strategies when they encounter difficulties in reading.Before reading,they learn to scan the whole passage and form a general impression of the passage and plan how much time they use to read this passage.While reading,they get to notice the words that they don’t know and learn to read the context,use word formation knowledge,or use their background information to solve the problems.After reading,they tend to reflect on what they have read and make some evaluation.(3)According to the data collected from pre-test and post-test,the Paired Samples T-tests are carried out using SPSS Statistics 20.The result shows that there is a great improvement as for the English marks of students with a lower reading ability from pre-test to post-test.Combined with the changes in their application of the metacognitive strategies,we can be sure that these strategies help them address the problems that cannot be solved before,thus helping them gain higher marks for the English reading part.As for students with a higher reading ability,the improvement of their reading marks is not so obvious.Maybe that is because they have already done pretty well in the pre-test.Some of them have got a full mark in the pre-test,so the room for improvement is not so big.As for the change of English reading attitude,the subjects demonstrate more positive attitudes and more interest in reading English because they have more confidence and can understand more.According to the research results,the metacognitive strategies have a positive influence on students’ English reading marks in senior high schools.Therefore,English teachers in senior high schools should be aware of that and consciously instruct students to learn about the basic knowledge and application of the metacognitive strategies in their daily teaching practices to help students improve their English reading marks and English reading attitude.