A Research On High School Students' Reading Strategy Training Via Textbooks

The latest National Curriculum Standard for High School English aims to develop the ability of self-study and cooperative study, to develop effective language learning strategy and to develop the overall ability of language use. Reading, as one of the four basic skills of English learning, has always been highly valued. In 2005, Jiangsu Province launched the new textbook---Advance with English. This textbook applies the new standard and adds a module called"reading strategy"for the sake of reinforcing the application of learning strategy in reading.However, the results are not as good as expected. There are three reasons for this. Firstly, the textbook provides sufficient and various reading materials while the training of reading strategy is not consistent. Secondly, teachers'focus lies on language knowledge rather than ability. Thirdly, students care more about exam scores instead of activities in the classroom.This research combines the training of reading strategy and the reading lesson. The research is carried out in Senior One. All the reading activities are designed to meet the needs of Students'development and to develop their reading strategies. The research questions are as follows: 1.What reading strategies are the most important for senior high students? 2.What can reading strategy training via textbooks do to improve students'reading comprehension? 3. How to use the textbook resources for reading strategy training?The study began with a questionnaire and a pre-study reading test, which serve as"baseline data". Based on the data and the features of textbooks, some reading strategies were chosen as the most important to be mastered by high school students. Accordingly, classroom activities were designed to show how to use the textbook resources for reading strategy training.After the completion of reading strategy instruction and training via reading activities based on the textbooks, a post-study reading test was carried out and a comparison was made. Answers to the research questions showed that strategy training was effective in enhancing middle school students'overall reading proficiency. The training, to different degrees, had effect on the improvement of students'abilities to grasp main ideas, to guess unknown vocabulary and to extract detailed information; however, it had no obvious effect on the improvement of their ability to make global inferences.The interview after the study revealed that students took positive attitudes towards the training of reading strategies via textbooks, indicating that such training activities can be used in high school classroom.The research in this thesis tried to explore a more effective approach to developing reading strategy and proficiency via textbooks. Despite its limitations, the study can act as an attempt and encouragement for peers to make full use of the textbooks, Advance with English.