A Study Of Junior Middle School Students' Reading Strategies In Minority Regions

Reading strategies refer to"the problem solving techniques readers employ to get meaning from a text"(Barnet, 1990), which is considered as the main factor facilitates reading proficiency. The researchers both at home and abroad concentrate their studies on the strategy patterns used by different groups of people (Hosenfeld, 1977, 1984; Lv Zhongshe and Tu Chengyuan, 1998 etc.), the effectiveness of reading strategies (Olshavsky, 1977; Wang Lifen and Wen Qiufang, 2003 etc.) and the like. However the researches carried out in the foreign background may not be adopted completely in Chinese contexts, in addition, the researches in China mainly focus on the college-level students. The studies on junior middle school students, particularly junior middle school students in minority regions, are rare.The study aims at having a study on reading strategies used by junior middle school students in minority region, taking Rongmei Junior Middle School in Hefeng County, Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture as an example. A questionnaire and a test paper are used as instruments. In addition, the collected data are all input into computer, and analyzed by SPSS17.0 statistics software package. The objectives of the study are listed below:(1) What is the overall pattern of English reading strategies employed by the junior three students in Rongmei Junior Middle School?(2) Are there any deficiencies in junior three students'reading comprehension that need further refinement?(3) Are there any correlation between the use of reading strategies and the result of English reading test?The result from the questionnaire shows that the junior three students in Rongmei Junior Middle School use reading strategies sometimes. Among the five groups of reading strategies, cognitive strategies is the most frequently used strategy group, then comes metacognitive strategies, affective strategies, social strategies and compensation strategies. From the English comprehension test, students'reading proficiency is in polarized distribution in this school. Then the correlation and regression analysis between strategies use and test result tell that cognitive strategies do have effect on students'reading and could predict 3% of the test result.According to the actual teaching condition of the school and the results from the questionnaire and test, the author summarizes the problems in Rongmei Junior Middle School students'reading. Some implications on teaching are further provided.