The Application Of Metacognitive Strategies To English Reading Teachimg In Senior Schools

It is known that reading comprehension is very important among the basic foreign language skills and how to improve learners'English reading proficiency and reading level has long been a common concern of researchers and English teachers. In recent years, a gradual shift has taken place in English teaching——the focus of research has been shifted from"how to teach"to"how to learn". English teachers began to realize that students'autonomous reading is even more important. Therefore,it is necessary to train the students'application of effective learning strategies to English reading, so that they can become capable English learners and lay a good foundation for their sustainable development.Ever since 1970's, research on language learning strategies especially in the domain of reading has been attracting more and more attention from linguists all over the world. Among all the learning strategies, metacognitive strategies are considered as more important than other strategies such as cognitive, affective strategies and so on. Flavell, O'Malley, Chamot and Oxford are among the prominent researchers, who categorized and expounded metacognitive strategies scientifically and systematically from different angles. Metacognitive strategies involve an ability of consciously using metacognitive knowledge to plan, arrange, monitor, regulate and evaluate the learning process. However, these studies on metacognition have been carried out either in English as a second language setting or focusing on general English learning. And little attention has been paid to investigating Chinese senior high school students'metacognition in their reading process and reading achievement. Besides, senior school students often encounter many problems in reading. The fact is that they seldom employ metacognitive strategies to solve these problems.Through investigating the current situation of Chinese learners'application of metacognitive strategies to English reading, the author has testified the effectiveness of the experiment, and found that there exist many problems in the learners'reading strategies applications to English reading. Hence the author probes many effective ways on how to integrate learners'metacognitive strategy training into Senior High School English reading and to improve their reading efficiency.Thus, in order to test whether metacognitive-strategy-based classroom instruction can help to foster independent English reader and improve students'reading proficiency, the author carried out a 18-week long teaching program based on metacognitive strategies theory among the 120 students in Senior One in No.1 High school of Huludao City, Liaoning Province. Two different training approaches concerning reading comprehension are taken in two groups. The experimental group was instructed and trained mainly through three approaches, awareness training, direct training and integrated training,while the control group is only trained in cognitive strategies. All the subjects are required to take two tests, the pre-test and post-test, before and after training. All the data are analyzed by software SPSS.The results are as follows: (1) Chinese Senior High school students show little knowledge of metacognitive knowledge, and they used the metacognitive strategies in English reading less frequently. (2) During the training of metacognitive strategies, a few students made some confusion about metacognitive strategies and concrete reading skills. (3) Through this training, the experimental group students'metacognitive ability of monitoring their learning has been improved constantly.The results prove that metacognitive strategy training contributes to the enhancement of students'reading motivation and helps students to plan, to monitor and to evaluate their reading effectively. Besides, through the training, the employment of metacognition can help students find a quick way of the coherent development on English knowledge, learning ability and self-awareness. The training can also develop the student's ability of independent and autonomous learning, which certainly can pave the way for their future study. Most important of all, once the students master the metacognitive strategies, they'll become the real masters of their English learning, which will benefit them all their life.