A Study In Senior One Students' Reading Strategies

Reading is an essential skill for English as second/ foreign language students. Reading is an important means for students to broaden their knowledge, develop their interest as well as acquire the ability for continuous and life-long learning.Without natural environment for language acquisition, reading plays a more important role in China's English teaching and learning. The curriculum arrangement and textbook compilation are greatly concerned on reading as well.As reading is considered so important in Chinese EFL teaching of senior high schools, more teaching periods are devoted to reading. Despite more time and efforts spent on reading, the results of teaching are not satisfying. The teaching of reading in senior high schools is marked with a low efficiency. The main purpose of the present study is to investigate the strategy use of Senior One students so as to enlighten the reading teaching in senior middle schools.The study consists of five parts.The first part is an introduction, which presents the necessity of studying reading strategies and introduces the purpose and significance of the research.Chapter one is the literature review. Some important relevant theories are explored in this chapter to establish a framework for describing the research presented in later chapters. Reading strategy is an important part of language learning strategy. So the present study must be based on the achievements in the researches on second language and foreign language learning strategy as well as reading theories.Chapter two introduces research questions, research methods, results and finds of the studies. The research methods contain a questionnaire investigation and a reading comprehension test. The questionnaire investigation examines the frequency and range of reading strategies use and the difference between efficient and non-efficient readers in their reading strategy use. The reading comprehension test reveals students'performance of some of the reading strategies which are especially required for Senior One students in National English Curriculum for Senior High Schools. According to the investigations on strategy use, the data analysis and the results of this study are made.Chapter three presents some discussions and recommendations in English reading learning and teaching based on the findings of this study.The last part is a conclusion to the study and some limitations of the present study are also proposed.