A Research On English Reading Strategy Training In Senior School

Reading is the most direct way to get information of humanity. Generally, reading ability consists of various skills, like perception, comprehension, memory, association, thought and speed, among which comprehension and speed are the main factors (Zhang Jianzhong, 1986). English reading is not only the major form to communicate with English as the medium and to get information, but also an important means to obtain the English language input as well. It plays an important role in comprehensively developing English language skills and increasing the overall language ability. For Chinese learners of English, the level of reading ability is an important aspect to test the English language proficiency. The quality of reading strategies using reflects whether the reader can participate in the reading process positively and use the appropriate methods to complete the reading task.For further understanding and discussion on whether reading strategy training contributes to improvement of reading comprehension ability, the author of this paper did a one-semester reading strategies training research on 84 students in two Senior Three classes that the author was teaching. After giving students some reading strategies training in daily teaching activities in reading classes and achieving certain results, the author carried out this research on the situation of students'use of reading strategies through questionnaires and interviews. The analysis and discussion of this study show that reading strategy training in the classroom teaching not only improves students'awareness of reading strategy, but also enables students to select and apply appropriate reading strategies in their learning activities. English reading strategy training can improve students'reading comprehension and the ability to analyze and solve problems, as well as help to improve overall performance in English. This paper is made up of five parts:The first part is Introduction, which gives a brief description of current situation of English teaching of reading in Senior Three so as to put forward the present research questions. The second part (Literature review) briefly summarizes and comments on researches about English reading strategies both at home and abroad in the past 30 years. The previous studies on method and mode of reading strategy training provide scientific basis and theory for this research. The third part (Research design) introduces the participants of the research, how questionnaire and interview questions are designed so as to know the situation of students'reading strategies using after a one-semester English reading strategy training plan carried out stage by stage according to the direct training (O'malley & Chamot, 2001:153, quoted Xia Zhanghong, 2006:14). And the process of data collection and research procedure are also introduced in this part. The fourth part presents a detailed analysis and discussion of the collected data from quantitative and qualitative perspective. From the results of the research we can see that training and teaching reading strategies is feasible and effective, even if Senior Three students can only use reading strategies at times. Reading strategy training can positively influence English reading result. The help of reading strategy training programs is supported through the analysis of related data collected by questionnaires and interviews. The last part of this paper summarizes the major findings of this study and points out the enlightenment on teaching practice and the aspects to be explored in the future.