An Experimental Study Of English Reading Strategy Training Of College Non-English Majors

As an important language skill, reading is considered as one of the major methods of language input. Hence, the study of reading strategies has drawn great attentions from a number of linguistic researchers. Many researches revolve around the correlation between strategy using and reading achievement, the differences in using strategies between successful and unsuccessful students, the relationship between strategy training and reading proficiency. All these studies by nature begin from analyzing the objective data. However, those researches neglect in part how learners evaluate the effectiveness of strategy training. Based on the previous studies, this paper attempts to discuss the choice of strategy of college non-English majors and their evaluation of strategy training effectiveness so as to find out the weak points in hope of providing some meaningful suggestions.Combining qualitative analysis with quantitative analysis together, this paper is to study the following research questions: (1) What are the type and range of reading strategies used by the subjects? (2) What are the sources for students to obtain the knowledge of reading strategy? (3) What kind of reading strategies can be taught or improved significantly via reading strategy training?This paper adopts the instruments of questionnaires, an interview and a 45-day training experiment to collect data. With the questionnaire concerning strategy use, the paper aims to find out the type and range of reading strategies used by the subjects. In addition, the paper is to investigate the sources for students to obtain the knowledge of reading strategy through the interview. With a 45-day training experiment and a questionnaire, the paper tries to figure out the training effectiveness. 92 subjects participate in a systematic reading strategy training experiment in the form of embedded approach,that is, combining the reading strategy training with the normal English class contents. The experiment designs a three-phase training procedures. Aided by a post-training questionnaire, the study aims to investigate the effectiveness of the experiment.The findings of this paper are as follows: (1) As for the use of three general strategy groups, the rank ordering clearly shows that reading strategies are used moderately; (2) Students can not obtain systematic and instructive materials related to reading strategy. In addition, they call for systematic trainings from teachers to gain the knowledge of reading strategies; (3) Not all the reading strategies develop equally and mastered well by the trainees. Among the six reading strategies trained to the students, finding topic sentence ranks the first in good training effectiveness. Next is followed by inferencing. The least effective training is on the instruction of structural analyzing strategy. The significance lies in threefold aspects: (1) It objectively reveals the real situation of the variety and range of reading strategies used by the subject, providing meaningful data to make the research a step further for raising their awareness of strategy-based reading;(2) It finds out the truth that students are in lack of materials and systematic training related to reading strategy, which makes teachers realize strategy teaching is far from enough so as to make it up with sufficient and effective training; (3) It helps teachers to find the weak points that are hard for students to master in the strategy training, which will improve the quality of training and help students read effectively.