A Study On English Reading Strategies Used In Senior High School Classroom Teaching

Language researchers and language teachers have found languagelearning strategies prominent among various factors affecting foreignlanguage learning. Both domestic and foreign researchers have conductedsubstantial research on learning strategies ever since1970s.Improving thestudents’ English as a Foreign Language (EFL) reading ability has been animportant task of English language teaching (ELT) in senior middle schools,and EFL reading strategy training is a major concern of The NationalEnglish Curriculum for Senior Middle School students. However, domesticresearchers focus their study on students at the tertiary level, whereasstudies targeted at senior high school students are scarce.The present study is to explore reading strategies employed by seniorhigh school EFL students and to examine the effect of the strategy trainingon their reading achievements.The purposes of this study are to investigate the characteristics ofEnglish reading strategies used by senior high school students, to detect thedifferences in strategy use between high and low achievement groups, andto examine the correlation between their reading strategy employment andEnglish achievements, in the hope of exploring the contribution of Englishreading strategies to English achievements. The data are collected mainlythrough a written questionnaire, and partly by means of group interviews.This study is based on the EFL Reading Strategy Inventory for SeniorMiddle School Students (ERSISMiSS), taking into consideration theCurriculum, Oxford (1990), Andersen(1999) etc. Acquired data is analyzed. The ERSISMiSS has66statements with two majorcategories(Cognitive and Metacognitive) and12sub-categories. It isadministered to127Senior Three students,64of whom are in theExperimental Group and63in the Control Group. This thesis aims toaddress the following three questions:1. Is there a statistically significant relationship between ChineseSenior Three students’ reported frequency of EFL reading strategy and theirreading achievements?2. What are the differences in strategy use between good and poorEnglish reading groups?3. Will EFL reading strategy training affect the students’ EFL readingstrategy and their IIEFL reading achievements? After both quantitative andqualitative analyses of the data, the study reaches the following findings:1. There is no statistically significant relationship between reportedfrequency of reading strategy and the pre-test scores, but there is astatistically significant relationship between reported frequency of readingstrategy and the post-test reading proficiency.2. There is no statistically significant difference in EFL readingstrategy between good and poor readers.3. EFL reading strategy training has fairly great effect on students’strategy use and their reading proficiency, but short-term training has greatereffect on their cognitive strategy use.4. Students with high English achievements have a better commandover English reading strategies than those with low English achievements.5. All the six reading strategy categories except compensationstrategies significantly correlate with English achievements. Readingstrategies as a whole possess a moderately predictive power on Englishachievements. Moreover, memory and metacognitive strategies are positivepredictors with statistical significance. 6. English reading strategy is important to students’ readingachievements and metacognitive strategy is the vital factor. It is necessary toimprove students’ awareness of reading strategy and reading effectiveness.The students in the strategy group exhibited stronger performance onthe comprehension test and suffered less loss between the two groups whenexternal conditions were disruptive. The findings also support theknowledge that reading strategies can be taught to students with direct andexplicit instructional methods. The strategy group did better than the controlgroup on the transfer comprehension test.