The Effects Of The Know-Want-Learn-Share(KWLS) Strategy On English Majors’ Reading Comprehension

Carrel once pointed out that reading is the most important one of the four basic language skills. Thus, reading ability, as the essential and the most important ability of English learners, receives constant attention from researchers of second language acquisition. Driven by the enthusiasm for reading research, the American scholar Donna Ogle(1986) proposed the famous KWL teaching model based on constructivism. She divides reading teaching into three integrated steps, namely K(what I know), W(what I want to know) and L(what I have learned). Ever since the emergence of it, the KWL teaching model has gained extensive attention and been applied to reading teaching in primary and secondary schools and even in universities in USA. Moreover, the KWL strategy gradually draws attention from researchers of SLA in other countries. They either examine the effectiveness of the KWL strategy or try to modify and refine the KWL strategy as KWHHL(Susan, 2006) or KWLM(Emaliana, 2013) etc. However, reflecting upon the situation at home, related research about the KWL strategy is very rare and simultaneously, it can be found that there exist some problems in college English reading teaching. Even though revolution has always been made to reading teaching, problems are still existed. Based on this situation, this paper aims to enrich the researches about the KWL strategy through exploring the effects of the KWLS strategy(the expansion of the KWL strategy and S representing to share what I have learned) on English majors’ reading comprehension with the hope that a better way to instruct the college English reading teaching can be found.Based on the practical situation of the college English reading teaching, the present study intends to study the different effects of the KWLS reading instructional strategy and the traditional English reading teaching on expository texts based on the cognitive constructivism and social constructivism with three research questions, namely whether the KWLS strategy can enhance students’ reading comprehension proficiency, whether it can affect students’ use of reading strategies and whether it can win students’ preference. The participants in this study are 50 English major sophomores in the Collage of Foreign Languages from Yangtze Normal University. They are from two classes with one experimental class receiving the KWLS instruction and one control class receiving the traditional English reading teaching. The experimental treatment lasts about eight weeks. Before the treatment, students’ reading comprehension and their use of reading strategies were investigated and the same were done after the experimental treatment.The SPSS 16.0 was used to analyze the data obtained from the tests and the surveys. The results indicate that the experimental class and the control class have no significant difference in their reading comprehension and in their use of reading strategies before the experimental treatment. However, after the experimental treatment, the two classes differ significantly in their reading comprehension and in their use of meta-cognitive strategies and social-affective strategies. And then according to the qualitative study about the interview, it is discovered that most students develop positive attitudes towards the new teaching method—the KWLS reading instructional strategy. So this study proves that the KWLS reading instructional strategy is an effective reading instructional method and it is much better than the traditional reading teaching method in enhancing students’ reading comprehension proficiency and their use of reading strategies.In the discussions about the research results, the author proposes that the KWLS strategy improves students reading comprehension proficiency, and their use of reading strategies mainly through advocating students to take an active role in constructing knowledge and to interact with their peers and ultimately wins students favor. In the end of the paper, some enlightenment about English teaching are offered based on the research results of the present study and some suggestions are offered for future study based on the limitations of the present study.