The Impact Of Strategies-Based Instruction On English Reading Comprehension

The present paper studies the impact of strategies-based instruction on reading comprehension. The instructional framework is Integrating Strategic Reading in L2 Instruction (ISRI) put forward by Joy Janzen and Fredericka L.Stoller (1998). An exploratory study was conducted with 60 English major freshmen of Yueyang Normal University. It set out to examine the ISRI's effectiveness on reading comprehension. Two questionnaires and two reading comprehension tests were delivered to the students, who were asked to indicate the beliefs they held in reading comprehension; the strategies they usually used in reading comprehension; and bad reading habits they had in the reading process. After the experiment, an interview was carried out to get more natural and authentic sources to complement the experiment results.Qualitative and quantitative analyses reveal that: ISRI experiment is effective; the students frequently adopt different types of reading strategies in their task of reading comprehension. Analyses were also conducted to determine a possible relationship between strategy use and achievement level in a reading comprehension test. Results suggest that different strategy use correlates with levels of achievement. More frequent and elaborate use of metacognitive strategies and high level cognitive strategies is associated with higher levels of achievement in reading comprehension. Beliefs about reading affect the students' application of proper strategies. Bad reading habits do not directly affect the reading comprehension.