An Empirical Study On Reading Strategy Training Based On Needs Analysis

Reading is an important access for English as a foreign language (EFL) learners to put themselves in the authentic situations of English learning, therefore it is very important for EFL learners to learn how to read. Based on the insights into the importance of reading, in the past 30 years, relevant empirical studies on reading strategies have been carried out widely both at home and abroad.This study is a reading strategy training program based on needs analysis, which is an important notion in English teaching for specific purposes (ESP). The aim of this study is to discover whether the students'reading performance could be improved after the reading strategy training. The participants in it are 56 English sophomores majoring in translation in an independent college and the data in this study are collected by interviews, a questionnaire, a pre-test paper and a post-test paper. Some specific research questions are expected to be answered through this study:(1) What reading strategies are supposed to be mastered by the English sophomores in an independent college?(2) What reading strategies do the English sophomores lack?(3) What reading strategy is supposed to be improved the most greatly after the reading strategy training program and what reading strategy is not?(4) Which group of readers would make the most obvious improvement on their reading performance?The study lasts for 12 weeks, consisting of three periods—needs analysis, reading strategy training and evaluation. In the period of needs analysis, students'needs for reading strategies are analyzed from three aspects: Target Situation Analysis (TSA), Present Situation Analysis (PSA) and Learning Situation Analysis (LSA). After the needs analysis, the reading comprehension strategies checklist (RCSC) in this study is made for the subsequent strategy training in the second period, in which some new linguistic concepts are used as theoretical underpinnings and also as specific methods for strategy training. Finally, the evaluation is made to test whether the aim of this study is fulfilled. In this 12-week training program, 14 reading strategies are supposed to be mastered, four of which are considered as what the students lack. The four reading strategies to be trained in this study are skimming, making inferences, identifying the author's intention and summarizing. After analysis of the results in the post-test, it is discovered that the students'overall reading performance makes improvement to some extent, among which identifying the author's intention improves the most greatly while making inferences improves the least. In addition, unsuccessful readers make the rapidest progress in reading performance after training.The findings of this study bring about enlightenment on teaching of reading. Above all, students'needs should be considered in classroom instruction of General English (GE). Then, the role of English teachers in class needs to be revalued as a helper, but not a leader. And finally, reading strategies should be integrated with language teaching and developing self-directed readers should be the most pressing teaching task.