A Study Of The Application Of Metacognitive Strategy To English Reading In Senior High School

Reading is a very important part in English teaching and an essential ability for students, which is a main way to know the culture and the latest development in various fields of foreign country. The "Senior High School English Syllable" and "English Curriculum Standard" pointed out that the purpose of senior high school English teaching focuses on training students’ ability of reading comprehension. Therefore, English reading ability occupys a very important position in English listening, speaking, reading and writing ability. So how to improve the students’English reading ability has become a popular problem for researchers.The term metacognition was first proposed by the American psychologist J.H. Flavell in 1976. Metacognitive strategies are students’ self-awareness and self-regulation including planning, monitoring and evaluating, which higher order executive skills to make the study successful. With the in-depth study of metacognitive psychologists, researchers of foreign language teaching gradually realize the important role and value of metacognition in foreign language learning. Many researchers apply metacognitive strategies in English teaching. According to the experiment, Metacognitive strategies can improve students’ English reading ability.This paper introduces the metacognitive strategy theory at home and abroad, classification of metacognitive strategies and methods of Metacognitive Knowledge Training. The research is carried out in in two classed including 82 students. The research methods are questionnaire, metacognitive strategies training and pre-and post-test. This paper has two questions:Can metacognitive strategy training improve students’metacognitive level? Can metacognitive strategies improve the senior high school students’English reading ability? In order to solve the two questions, One class is randomly selected as the control class and the other as the experimental class. In the experimental class, metacognitive strategy training is applied while the control class is taught with the traditional approaches as usual. Before and after the experiment, students take the pre-test and post-test. All the data is analyzed by SPSS(21.0).According to the results of the research, the conclusions are as follows:1. The metacognitive strategies (especially planning strategies and evaluation strategies) haven’t been widely used in English reading among senior students.2. Through the metacognitive strategies training, the level of students’s metacognition has improved.3. The metacognitive strategies training are more effective than traditional teaching methods in English reading, which means metacognitive strategies can improve students’s English reading ability.