An Empirical Study On Students' Self-evaluation In Teaching English Reading In Senior High School

This thesis reports an empirical study which examines through experiments the relationship between student self-evaluation and reading ability of students in Grade One in high school. Reading ability here is defined as students' ability to accomplish reading comprehension test and to apply reading strategies, verified by students' achievement on reading comprehension test and the reading strategy use questionnaire. The study was undertaken in an attempt to find a new mode of reading training to help high school students do English reading comprehension more effectively and improve their ability to use reading strategies they have learned. Two questions are addressed in the study: 1) Whether there will be a significant difference in English reading ability between subjects who use self-evaluation skills in reading and those who don't. 2) Whether there is a positive connection between the subjects' attitudes and ways of practicing reading training. The subjects involved in this study were 117 students in Grade One who were admitted into Mengshan High School in September 2005. After their entering to the high school they were arranged in two different classes according to their achievement in high school entrance exam and both taught by the author. One class, the experimental group was assigned to use a reading strategy questionnaire and a after-class reading checklist to make self-evaluation on their reading training while the control group stuck to the traditional approach. After a period of 18 weeks, their English reading ability was evaluated and measured. A test used as the final exam paper for their former schoolmates, three questionnaires and an interview were used to collect data in this study. Therefore qualitative data as well as quantitative data were involved. Two hypotheses were raised in the study: 1) In reading, that students exercise self-evaluation skills will be more effective in improving their reading ability than not doing so, because student self-evaluation enables students to know more clearly about their reading and promotes students to take more responsibility for their learning. 2) The students who employ self-evaluation in reading...