The Application Of Meta-cognitive Strategies To English Reading Teaching In Senior High School

With further development of globalization, English as an international language has become more and more popular and is also highlighted by the teachers and learners. English reading is a complex process to obtain information, which also plays a main part in university entrance exam for senior high school students. It is always a challenge for both teachers and learners on how to improve students’ reading proficiency.John Flavell first presents meta-cognition in his book Cognitive Development. Meta-cognition is described as "the cognition of cognitive activities themselves", in other words, it is about individual knowledge of his cognitive process and his ability in adjusting the process. Later, the theory of meta-cognition developed, more and more famous researchers conducted researches on meta-cognition. And meta-cognitive strategies as an important part of meta-cognition are helpful for L2teaching. The meta-cognitive strategies mainly refer to the strategies for planning, management, monitoring, adjusting and evaluation. Based on meta-cognitive strategies, learners can make reading plan, manage and monitor reading process, adjust reading methods in time and evaluate reading result.Based on the classification of O’Malley, Chamot and Oxford, this study attempts to conduct an experiment on applying meta-cognitive strategies to reading teaching for senior high school students. The experiment is carried out on104senior high school students of Grade Two from Jianchang senior high school, in Liaoning province. The experiment selects two classes, Class Five as EC and Class Seven as CC. The meta-cognitive strategies are applied in EC, while CC is taught by the traditional teaching approach. This study tries to explain the following three questions:Do senior high school students usually use meta-cognitive strategies in English reading teaching? Can meta-cognitive strategies reduce senior high school students’English reading anxiety? Can meta-cognitive strategies improve senior high school students’English reading proficiency?This study applies meta-cognitive strategies questionnaires, reading anxiety questionnaires and two reading proficiency tests. Through collecting questionnaires data and test scores, and then they are analyzed by SPSS17.0. Conclusion is drawn as follows: Meta-cognitive strategies are generally not used by senior high school students in English reading. That is to say, senior high school students’use of meta-cognitive strategies in English reading is in a low level. Meta-cognitive strategies are effective in reducing senior high school students’English reading anxiety. Meta-cognitive strategies can improve senior high school students’ English reading proficiency.At last, this paper proposes some pedagogical implications of this study, some limitations and suggestions for the future researches are also illustrated in this part.