An Empirical Study On Training Students’ Application Of Reading Strategies In Junior Middle School

Reading, an important way of acquiring and exchanging information for learners,is one of the most essential and important skills in foreign language learning.Therefore, improving students’ reading comprehension ability is one of major tasks in English teaching. It’s especially the case for junior middle schoollearners, for the English study in the junior middle school is not only the basis for thelong English learning road, but also the foundation for their future academic andoccupational success.For many years, grammar-translation oriented teaching method has dominatedthe reading pedagogy. With the development of teaching theory and practice, manyproblems of this method appear. Thus people are constantly exploring new ways ofteaching reading. Since the 1970 s with the development of learning strategy research,more and more attention has been drawn to the strategy training, but some doubt hasbeen raised to the effectiveness and appropriateness of it. Then what method on earthshould teachers use to improve students’ reading ability? Thus the empirical studies inthis field are urgent and necessary.This study intends to examine and prove the effectiveness of reading strategy training in junior middle schoolEnglish reading teaching. It aims to find out the answers to the following research questions:1) Can the strategy training improve students’ reading comprehension proficiency?2) What is students’ attitude towards reading and reading strategy training?Quantitative and qualitative analyses are combined together in this study toexamine the effects of strategy training on students’ reading comprehensionproficiency. The participants are 102 students in junior Grade Eight fromMongolianMiddle School in Xilinhot. Amongthem, 52 students comprise the experimental group.The other 50 students are inthecontrol group.The experimental class receives explicit reading strategy training lasting for sixteen weeks, while the comparison group follows the traditional teaching methodand receives no strategy training; they just participate in the readingcomprehensiontests before and after the training and fill in the reading comprehensionquestionnaire after the training. The data of the two tests and the survey ofquestionnaire are analyzed with the following results:1. Reading strategy training has positive effects on students’ overall readingcomprehension proficiency.2. Students take positive attitude towards the training; their attitude towards readinghas also changed significantly; their reading motivation and interests have alsoaccordingly improved.All the experiment results show that reading strategy training has positive effectson junior middle school students in reading, thus proving the effectiveness of readingstrategy training, which offers a reference to teachers as to how to teach reading in thefuture.