| Reading comprehension is regarded as one of the important skills and the ultimate goals in language learning, especially in ESL or EFL. Therefore, how to enhance the reading comprehension ability has become a common issue under research. Many researchers like Hammadou (1991) has demonstrated that reading comprehension does not only refers to understand vocabulary, sentences, paragraphs or even texts, but also means a complex integration of the readers’prior knowledge, attitudes, experiences and their metacognitive strategies used in reading. Ever since1970’s, the focus of research has changed from "how to teach" to "how to learn". Therefore, much emphasis has been put on the language learning strategies especially in the domain of reading from all over the world. Among all the learning strategies, meta-cognitive strategies are considered to be more important than other strategies such as memory strategies, cognitive strategies, affective strategies and so on. The application of meta-cognitive strategies has been proved effective in foreign language learning.(Balzer&Brown1884;Brown1981; Palinscar&Brown1984,1985).Most of the foreign studies have showed that the application of met-cognitive strategies was effective in improving the native speakers’reading ability; however, few have been administered on the metacognitive strategies of non-natives. Their research achievement may not cater to Chinese situation. And less attention has been paid to investigating Chinese senior high school students’meta-cognitive strategies in the process of reading. Most of these studies were used qualitative methods, offering no statistice evidence. In addition, for senior school students, many problems are often encountered in senior students’reading process. But seldom of them have the awareness of employing metacognitive strategies to solve these problems. In this thesis, based on many previous theories and researches at home and abroad, the author tries to probe whether it is effective for students’reading proficiency to apply metacognitive strategies in reading. And suggests to integrate learners’meta-cognitive strategies into senior high school English reading class, and provide some suggestions combining a specific examples.The author investigates the application of meta-cognitive strategies in reading in two natural classes from grade two Yingkou No.2Senior School in Liaoning Province, and train them with metacognitive strategies to find out whether the application of meta-cognitive strategies can improve the students’ reading proficiency.110students are involved in this experiment and both the experimental group and the control group have55students. In this experiment, questionnaires, pre-test, post-test and interviews were used to collect data. Before the experiment, a questionnaire was conducted in both experimental and control group to get the information about the situation of the students using meta-cognitive strategies in their process of reading. But only the experimental class received metacognitive strategies, while the control class were taught as usual. The research results are:Chinese Senior High school students show little knowledge of meta-cognitive strategies and less apply meta-cognitive strategies in English reading. Through experimental training, students’metacognitive awareness improved and they made great progress in reading test.Therefore, it is essential to consciously train students’meta-cognitive strategies in reading teaching process, which will not only enhance students’reading motivation and confidence, help students to plan, monitor and evaluate their reading process effectively, but also develop their reading proficiency. Above all, it can faciliate students’autonomous learning, help students to be capable English learner, which will benefit them all their life. |
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