A Study Of Metacognitive Awareness In English Reading Strategies Used By Third-year Senior Middle School Students

For the past several decades, reading strategies have aroused many researchers'interests, but the research has mainly focused on strategy use while ignoring the function of metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. Thus teachers cannot see the reasons why students cannot apply strategies successfully and automatically. They cannot provide students with specific plans or purpose prior to reading, and students themselves do not know how to monitor and regulate their reading strategies beneficially during the reading process.This study aims at investigating the students'awareness of reading strategy use at the senior middle school level. The participants were 196 third-year students from Jian County Middle School. They were asked to complete a questionnaire, (Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory), developed by Mokhtari and Sheorey in 2002 and then take part in an English test. All the data were entered into SPSS 13.0 for statistical analysis in order to find out what strategies the students applied and to what extent metacognitive awareness affects reading proficiency. The major findings are, first, that there is a moderate awareness of all the strategies; secondly, the students hold a preference for Problem Solving Reading Strategies, followed by Global and Support Reading Strategies; thirdly, females show higher use of reading strategies than males in each individual category, as well as in the combined sub-categories. Also, the females are more careful and considerate while the males are more adventurous and bolder. Finally, the readers'metacognitive awareness of reading strategies is closely linked to their language proficiency.Several sources have been found, which might serve as explanations for the above findings. First, Chinese students usually regard their teachers as the absolute authority, and have formed the habit of obeying the teachers without question. This explains why the students used the critical awareness strategies infrequently. In terms of reading strategy differences between male and female students, we can easily see that there was a gender difference, as well as differences due to their social position and cultural beliefs about learning. Finally, the competition between the students is very strong. Such a strong competitiveness results in their reluctance to co-operate.Based on the findings above, several suggestions can be made to help teachers improve their teaching and help the students improve their reading efficiency. First, teachers should pay attention to encouraging the students of the need to be cooperative in the process of the reading strategy training. At the same time, teachers should treat various types of students in different ways. Finally, teachers should be a"strategy mentor"to instill the concept of metacongitive awareness into the students. They should attach importance to building up students'competence in using various types of strategies. Only in this way can the students'reading proficiency be improved.