Investigation And Study On The Use Of English Reading Strategies By Senior Middle School Students

For the English Teaching in China, reading has always been regarded as one of the most important language skills. Mastering English reading strategy and improving English reading efficiency are important for students to acquire knowledge, improve their own quality and cultivate noble sentiment. The new curriculum also requires students to use learning strategies flexibly to assist the learning of English skills.Integrating the classification methods of O’Mally & Chamot (1990), Oxford (1990) and other scholars and combining with the author’s own teaching practice, the reading strategies are divided into three dimensions:cognitive strategies, meta-cognitive strategies, affective social strategies. The English reading strategy use of 1306 students of the first grade in Bengcha Senior High School of Jiangsu Province has been investigated and discussed. This research mainly discusses the following questions:1. What English reading strategies do senior high school students of grade one tend to use?2. What are the differences between high score readers and low score readers in the use of reading strategies? For the same reading strategies, is there any significant difference between high score readers and low score readers?3. What is the relationship between reading strategy use and reading proficiency levels?In this study, the following instruments are used:a questionnaire, an interview outline, the English papers of the first monthly exam and the mid-term exam of the first semester of 2012-2013 school year in Jiangsu Bencha Senior High School. The data received are analyzed by SPSS 13.0. The major findings are drawn as follows:1) As for the use frequency of the reading strategies, students of senior one tend to use cognitive strategies, followed by meta-cognitive strategies and affective social strategies.2) High score readers usually has a higher frequency of general reading strategy use, and use more kind of reading strategies. The most obvious differences between high score readers and low score readers are in using meta-cognitive strategies.3) The more frequently the readers use reading strategies, the higher the reading efficiency is. Conversely, the less the readers use reading strategies, the lower the reading efficiency is.Finally, based on these findings, the author puts forward the measures of how to improve the ability of reading strategy use and its efficiency of high school students. Teachers should help students form right attitude towards reading, introduce reading strategies to them systematically and conduct systematic reading strategy training as well.