The Application Of English Reading Strategies In Senior High School

English reading plays a significant role in English learning and acquisition. In this process, reading ability can be improved step by step. Since the 1970 s, reading strategies have been focused on by domestic and foreign scholars. However, most domestic researches pay attention to reading strategies among college students, and the studies are limitedly carried out on senior high school students. In fact, many teachers don’t attach much importance to reading strategy instruction and they still teach reading with the traditional model, which does harm to form students’ autonomous reading ability. As an old saying goes, “teaching one to fish is better than giving him fish.” Thus, a teacher should not only instruct language knowledge, but also teach students how to learn.Based on previous researches, the author attempts to answer the following three questions through this study.1. What strategies do the students utilize in English reading in Kangle No. 1 Middle School?2. Which level of students can benefit the most from reading strategy training, the high-, the middle-, or the low-students?3. What are the students’ attitudes toward reading strategy training?Before the experiment, the author firstly summarizes and analyzes what reading strategies have been utilized in reading comprehension in the College Entrance Examination in recent years. Secondly, the author investigates the situation of English reading strategies employed by senior high school students in Kangle No. 1 Middle School, as well as the differences on reading strategies utilized by different levels of students via the questionnaires. Thirdly, under the guidance of Cohen’s Strategies-Based Instruction(SBI), O’Malley and Chamot’s classification of reading strategy and schema theory, the author selects 93 students from two classes(class 14, class 15) in grade one as subjects. Then, reading strategy training is conducted for eighteen weeks. The subjects’ data of pre-test and post-test on reading comprehension are analyzed quantitatively via SPSS17.0. The aim is to find out which level of students can best benefit from reading strategy training. Furthermore, the interview is carried out to know the students’ attitudes toward reading strategy training.According to 18-week reading strategy training experiment, the results can be shown as follows: 1. The students more or less utilize all types of reading strategies. Notably, the frequency of reading strategies utilized by the students in Kangle No. 1 middle school is not high. There are great differences on different level of students using reading strategies. The better achievement the students obtain, the higher frequency of reading strategies they have utilized in English reading. 2. Reading strategy training can improve students’ reading proficiency, and it is more effective to improve the reading proficiency of medium-level students. That is to say, the middle-level students can best benefit from reading strategy training. 3. Most of students enjoy reading strategy training. However, a few low-level students think that there is no difference to adopt any reading methods. The high-level students and the middle-level students prefer to adopt the interactive reading models and utilize more reading strategies. Also, the low-level students like interactive reading models. Due to the lack of basic English knowledge, nonetheless, the scores are lower than the other studens.