Application Of Meta-cognitive Strategies To English Reading Teaching In Senior High Schools

As we all know, future illiterates will no longer be the people who do not learn to read, but those who do not know how to study. Nowadays, new disciplines come one after another because of the rapid development of science and of knowledge explosion. It is a serious problem how to tally with this situation. The only one answer is to learn how to study. Therefore, school education, as a decisive stage in one's life, should find it so important for students to learn how to study and develop a correct learning strategy.Due to the importance of reading among the basic foreign language skills, how to improve students' English reading proficiency has long been a common concern of researchers and English teachers. It was not until the 1960s that the focus of research shifted from "how to teach" to "how to learn". For the first time, it was widely acknowledged that training students how to read was even more important. Teachers should consider how to foster students' ability to read independently. The task of the Senior English New Curriculum Standards is to develop not only the students' language knowledge and skills but also a good learning habit and strategy. More specific demands are set in the Senior English Curriculum Standards, which also throw more light on the research on English reading.Drawing on the research on learning strategies at home and abroad, this thesis finally decides on the training of meta-cognitive strategies (the planning, monitoring, regulation and evaluating strategies) as the focus and probes how to integrate meta-cognitive strategy training into Senior High School English reading teaching. Its aim is to form learning ways and develop learning abilities.In addition, In order to test whether or not meta-cognitive-strategy-based classroom instruction can help to foster independent English reader and improve students' reading proficiency, the author carried out a 16-week long teaching program based on meta-cognitive strategies among the 117students in Senior One in No.4 Middle School of Yueyang City, Hunan Province .Two different traininggroups concerning reading comprehension are taken in two groups. The experimental group is trained in a meta-cognitive strategies-based approach, involving both meta-cognitive strategies and cognitive strategies, while the control group is trained in cognitive strategies only. All the subjects are required to take two tests, the pre-test and post-test, before and after training. All the data are analyzed by software SPSS. The results indicate that the meta-cognitive strategies can facilitate learning strategies training.The result suggests that the meta-cognitive strategy training contributes to the enhancement of students' reading motivation and helps students to plan, monitor, regulate and evaluate their reading effectively. Most important of all, once the students master these meta-cognitive strategies, they become the real masters of their English learning, which will benefit them all their life.