A Study On English Reading Strategies For Senior Students

Reading plays a more and more important part in today's English teaching andlearning in senior middle schools. English reading competence is the basicprerequisite for developing other kinds of language competence. Especially for thestudents in China, without the natural language environment, English reading is notonly one of the main basic skills that students hope to achieve during their Englishlearning, but also the important way to develop other language skills and obtain alarge amount of information. In addition, emphasis on the development of readingcompetence, to some extent, means introducing to students the practical self-taughtways of learning English. And they can keep on benefiting a lot from their readingability after their graduation from schools. So we should pay a special attention to theEnglish reading teaching and learning in senior middle schools. However, due to thedeep-seated traditional teaching theories and methods, there are not many efforts to bemade to the research of reading teaching. As a result, the teaching of reading in seniormiddle schools is not so satisfactory, and students have various difficulties in Englishreading comprehension in their studies and examinations. Students' reading barriershave directly influenced their integrating language competence. The problems ofEnglish reading among senior middle school students are serious and need to beimproved as soon as possible.In recent years, researchers have highlighted the role that learning strategies areplaying in language learning. Researchers hold the assumption that given effectivelearning strategies, ineffective learners could be in a better position to solve theirproblems in language learning. They believe that proper introduction of strategicknowledge and strategy training for students is a key factor in improving their readinglevel. But nowadays much research about English reading strategies has focused oncollege students, and the research on senior middle school students is still verydeficient. Teachers in middle schools usually pay little attention to the teaching ofreading strategies and skills. And most students know little about reading strategies,let alone how to use them. This thesis is expected to research and analyze thesituations of strategic knowledge in reading and reading strategy use for senior middleschool students. After finding out their main reading barricades and the readingstrategies they lack, the author makes some possible suggestions to help students notonly realize where their reading difficulties are, but learn to adjust the proper readingstrategies to solve the problems, and develop their abilities to find and solve theproblems by themselves, thus result in the promotion of learner autonomy in languagelearning for students in senior middle schools.The paper firstly makes a literature review, and introduces some related theories:language learning strategies, reading and reading strategies. Based on these theories,two questionnaires and interview are used to carry out the investigation about Englishreading strategies. One hundred and seventy-five students in Senior Grade One in MaLan Middle School in Xin Jiang took part in the survey. Detailed analysis of thecollected data has generated the following findings and pedagogical implications:⑴ Vocabulary difficulties. New words worry students most and hinder thestudents' reading comprehension more directly than anything else. A large andadequate vocabulary is a prerequisite to the development of students' reading skills.As for this problem, the suggestions are: guessing new words by definition clues,synonym and antonym clues, punctuation clues, clues to common sense, correlatedword from contexts, word formation, and using a dictionary.⑵ Faulty reading habits. There are various faulty reading habits during thereading process of middle school students, such as vocalizing and subvocalizing,regressive eye movements, finger-pointing, and so on. These habits make readingslower. A slow reader is likely to read with poor understanding. The detailedsuggestions are given to improve some main faulty reading habits which are commonamong senior middle school students.⑶ Lack of basic reading skills. In the survey, it is found that most of the studentshave not received systemic training of reading skills. Many experiments have provedthat only after a reader learns some reading skills, can he improve his readingefficiency and get the most information within a short time. So in this part some basicreading skills which are suitable for English reading in senior middle schools areintroduced, such as skimming, scanning, prediction, reading in sense groups,identifying reference, and so on.⑷ Lack of enough cultural background knowledge. It is found in the survey thatstudents are extremely inefficient in the related cultural background knowledge.According to the present English teaching situation in Chinese senior middle schools,enrichment and input of cultural background knowledge in daily English instruction isthought to be a better and more efficient way to solve the cultural barriers in students'reading.In the end, the paper summarizes the major findings and mentions some otherfactors that may influence the improvement of students' English reading strategies. Itis especially indicated that the change of the opinions that teachers and students havein English reading plays a crucial role. Limitations of the study are also pointed outand can be the reference for the future research.