The Role Of Metacognition In The Development Of English Reading Strategy And Reading Comprehension In A Senior High School

Reading is one of the most important cognitive activities of human society. It's also a complicated process involving both low and high levels of cognitive and metacognitive abilities. So it has always had a prominent position in the interests of both researchers and teachers.There are studies of bottom-up models, top-down models, the interactive model, and schemata theory in reading experienced. Among them the interactive model and schemata theory are proved to be able to account for the reading processes and comprehension more clearly and properly, which have been widely accepted by researchers nowadays. Since reading involves a complicated process, more and more researchers and teachers also focus their attention on the study of reading strategies many of whom have noticed the positive role of metacognition in reading strategies training and reading comprehension. They confirmed that the training in the effective use of metacognitive strategies can improve the abilities of learners in reading.This thesis aims to investigate whether the metacognitive strategy training can develop students'English reading ability in high schools in China. Based on the related theories and the general situation of the teaching English reading in high school in China, the author poses the following hypothesis:Reading strategies training which has a focus on metacognition training can help students improve their English reading comprehension.The author conducted an experiment involving two classes in senior grade one in Tangshan No.1 High School. One was the experiment class, which got metacognitive strategy training. The other was the control class, without such special training. The two classes were taught by the same teacher, employing almost the same reading materials. At the end of the experiment a questionnaire was carried out to check the mastery of the strategies.The analysis of statistics of the two tests---a pre-test and a post-test, and a questionnaire indicates that the experiment class made much progress in reading comprehension. Expectantly the findings testify the hypothesis of the thesis. The result also shows that the metacognition plays an active role in cognitive reading strategy training, and therefore metacognitive strategies are very likely to be instructed in the teaching of English reading in senior high school in China.In the end, the author offers some suggestions for reading comprehension teaching and learning. In addition some limitations of the current research and suggestions for further research are also mentioned.