A Survey Of The Application Of Metacognitive Strategies In Senior High Schools’ English Reading

Reading Comprehension is an important part of English teaching in senior high schools. During the past three decades, considerable research has been undertaken into the nature of L2reading, which has influenced the method of teaching and learning in L2reading. The development of the concept of metacognition gives a new angle to investigate reading comprehension. Some researchers have showed that metacognitive knowledge and strategies have a positive effect upon readers’enhancement of L2reading proficiency and the development of autonomous reading ability.The main objectives of the thesis are to investigate the situation of senior high school students’application of metacognitive strategies in English reading and to analyze and compare the situation of metacognitive strategies used by students in top class and students in the average class as well as the situation in boy students and girl students and finally to analyze the reason of the current situation combining the data with the interview. The thesis first reviews some related theories and researches on metacognition in L2reading comprehension and then based upon them the frame of the research is formed. The author delivers questionnaires on the use of metacognitive strategies to123students in the Attached School of Nankai Universtiy in Tianjin and interviews some students and teachers. Through the analysis, the following conclusion has been drawn:1. On the whole, the situation of metacognitive strategies used by senior high school students is just at an ordinary level; they tend to use monitoring strategies more but their awareness of using evaluating strategies is rather low;2. Students in the top class use metacognitive strategies more frequently than the students in the average class;3. Girl students use metacognitive strategies more frequently than boy students;4. Teachers’ teaching method and process in class have a great influence on students’ own ways of adopting strategies in reading. In the end, according to these results, some inspirations and suggestions are given to teachers. They should pay more attention to metacognition on how to effectively enhance students’metacognitive awareness and train their students to adopt metacognitive strategies in class so as to make them become efficient and independent learners.