An Empirical Study Of The English Reading Strategies Training, High School English Students With Learning Difficulties

Reading is generally believed to be the most important among the four language skills, as it is the major way of getting language input in foreign language learning. Thus the teaching of reading is regarded as one of the most important parts in senior English class . Much research has shown that reading strategies can not only improve the students' reading comprehension ability, but also help cultivate the ability of autonomic learning.However, as the students advance with their English learning, the polarization among the students is so obvious that some of them may come to lose their interest and confidence and gradually their English becomes even poorer.Because of the position that reading holds in language learning, the writer of this thesis first tries to get some general ideas of how Senior One students are learning English and what their reading habits are by using a questionnaire. After that, a survey on their use of reading strategies is conducted to further investigate into the factors that contribute to the development of their reading ability, the result of which is used as the basis for the planning and implementation of a reading strategy training program in an attempt to help the weak English learners out of the difficult situation. In order to test the validity of the training program, the researcher uses two groups of students as the subjects of the research: an experimental group and a control group. After 6 weeks of strategy training, a reading test is administered for both groups and data are collected and analyzed to see the effect of the training program on the experimental group in the hope of finding an effective way to help those weak English learners.The result of this research indicates that the training program can enhance the awareness of strategies on the part of those who are poor in English. And, as the students' reading ability is improved, their reading marks are a bit higher, which, in turn, as it is presupposed by the author of this thesis, has positive effect on their English learning in general.