An Empirical Study Of The Effect Of Strategy-based Instruction On The Development Of Reading Comprehension Ability

Reading is one of the most important ways to obtain information, acquire culture knowledge and get language input. Most English teachers are influenced by traditional reading instruction. During the process of reading instruction, they spend a lot of time explaining language points and grammatical items, neglecting cultivating students’ reading ability. Most students lose interest in English, even are afraid of it due to a variety of learning barriers, like vocabulary, grammar, culture background, and psychological factors.Especially for students from the countryside or remote area, it is their weakness to read extensively and effectively.Reading is a basic language learning skill. In English Curriculum Standard(2011Edition), nine levels of reading objectives and requirements are put forward, advocating the way of learning by experience, practice, participation, cooperation and communication,requiring teachers to carry out reading strategy instruction, encouraging students to reach Level Five reading objective. During the process of learning, students are expected to discover the laws of language learning, experience success, gradually master language knowledge and skills, and through effective learning strategy, develop their comprehensive language ability.Research into reading strategy started in the 1970 s, and has aroused a lot of attention from scholars both at home and abroad. However, study of reading strategy in China mainly focuses on university students, and research which involves middle school students,especially middle school students from remote areas, is relatively rare. For the two reasons, the writer decides to carry out an empirical study of reading strategy teaching in a rural junior high school.The hypothesis of this research is that students’ reading ability can be improved and their reading scores can be raised by training their reading strategy. 76 junior-one students in a junior school in the county of Luliang, Yunnan are chosen as experimental subjects.To carry out the study effectively and objectively, the writer asks a computer teacher to help divide the students randomly into two groups, namely an experimental group and a control group. The subjects in the experimental group are trained by explaining somespecific reading strategies and telling them how to use them, while the students in the control group are taught by using conventional methods. The experiment lasts twelve weeks. In the study, questionnaires, tests, interviews, the researcher’s logs and the students’ diaries are used to collect the data. The scores from pre-test and post-test and the results of two questionnaires are analyzed by SPSS.The results of the tests show that English reading strategy instruction can not only improve students’ reading ability, but also raise their English reading marks effectively.The data from the questionnaires, interviews and logs indicate that English reading strategy instruction can promote students’ reading ability. The findings of the study indicate that English reading strategy training is one of the most important approaches to the development of reading comprehension ability.