A Survey On The Situation Of The Senior High School Students' Application Of Metacognitive Strategies In English Reading

Reading Comprehension is an important part of English teaching in senior high schools. During the past three decades, considerable research has been undertaken to the nature of L2 reading, which has influenced the method of teaching and learning in L2 reading. The development of the concept of metacognition gives a new angle to investigate reading comprehension. Some researches have showed that metacognitive knowledge and strategies have positive influence upon readers'enhancement of L2 reading proficiency and the development of autonomous reading ability.The thesis paper first reviews some related theories and researches about metacognition in L2 reading comprehension and then upon these the frame of the research is formed. The author delivers the questionnaire on the use of metacognitive strategies to 197 students in an ordinary senior high school in Changchun and interview some students and teachers. The main objectives are to investigate the situation of senior high school students'application of metacognitive strategies in English reading and to analyse and compare the situation of metacognitive strategies used by students in the experimental class and students in the common class and finally to analyze the reason of the current situation combining the data with the interview. Through the analysis, the following conclusion has been drawn: 1. the situation of metacognitive strategies used by senior high school students is just at a general level; they tend to use monitoring strategies more, but their awareness of using evaluating strategies is rather low; 2. Students in the experimental class use metacognitive strategies more frequently than the studetns in the common class; 3. teachers'teaching method and process in class have great influence on students'own ways of adopting strategies in reading. In the end, according to these results, some inspirations and suggestions are given to teachers who should pay more attention to metacognition about how to effectively enhance students'metacognitive awareness and train them to adopt metacognitive strategies in class so as to make them become efficient and independent learners.