A Study Of The Effect Of Applying Think-aloud On Cultivating Metacognitive Awareness Of English Reading Strategies In Middle School

Reading strategy,as a key factor of successful reading,has been a research hot spot for many years.How to teach reading strategy and cultivate readers' metacognitive awareness of reading strategy have inspired numerous scholars at home and abroad.Many studies indicate that second language learners are supposed to employ some reading strategies consciously to enhance their language performance and promote the ability of cognizance,thus effectively improve their reading ability.In China,the investigation and research have revealed that students'awareness of reading strategies use is at a lower middle level.By interviewing some experienced English teachers and students,the author finds that although some teachers think they have taught reading strategies implicitly or explicitly,students claim that they do not have a picture of reading strategies,or they are unclear about how to and when to use reading strategies appropriately.Most students admit that they have some reading problems while understanding original English books.For example,they don't know how to get the gist,or how to learn the meaning of unknown words.Thus teaching reading strategies and cultivating students'awareness of reading strategies is necessary for the purpose of helping them become autonomous lifelong learners,which is in line with English Curriculum Standards for Middle School.On the basis of the current situation of English reading strategies teaching and previous research,in this study,Think-aloud,a widely used pedagogical method in the study of reading,is applied to teach 5 frequently-used English reading strategies in middle school and to cultivate and increase students' metacognitive awareness of English reading strategies.To verify the effect of Think-aloud on English reading strategies training,an empirical study is carried out with the hope of providing some beneficial suggestions for English reading instruction.This study intends to answer the following two questions:1)What is the overall state of middle school students'metacognitive awareness of English reading strategies?2)What are the effects of applying Think-aloud on teaching reading strategies and cultivating metacognitive awareness of reading strategies?To answer these two research questions,this study includes both a survey and an empirical study.Based on the investigation of the overall state of middle school students' metacognitive awareness and perceived use of reading strategies,an empirical study is conducted to attest the effect of applying Think-aloud on reading strategy instruction.Participants in this study are Grade 8 students from a school in Shenzhen.Four paralleled classes totaling 173 students do the investigation,but only two paralleled classes take part in experimental research.Class 3(44 students)makes up the experimental class and class 4(44 students)makes up the control class.Both quantitative and qualitative methods are adopted in the present study.Questionnaires are used to investigate metacognitive awareness of English reading strategies of students.Reading tests and Think-aloud protocols(TAPs)are applied to examine students' English reading abilities,their use of reading strategies and the effectiveness of Think-aloud.Interviews are conducted to find out teachers' and students',attitudes towards Think-aloud and English reading strategies teaching.After data collection,SPSS 17.0 is used by the author to do data analysis which includes the descriptive analysis,the Paired Samples T-test and Independent Samples T-test.Besides,NVivo 10 is applied to analyze the interview and think-aloud protocols.The findings are as follows:1)Metacognitive awareness of English reading strategies of middle school students is at a lower middle level.According to the result of Survey of Reading Strategies(SORS)questionnaire,it's evident that Problem Solving Reading Strategies such as adjusting reading speed,concentrating on reading are students'favorite,then followed by Global Reading Strategies,which refers to a global analysis of textual content.The last one is Support Reading Strategies which deals with the supporting mechanism aimed to help readers comprehend the text.This finding is in line with the previous studies;2)Reading strategy training through Think-aloud is conducive to boosting students' English reading comprehension;3)Most students keep an optimistic attitude towards teaching reading strategies via Think-aloud.After receiving reading strategy training via Think-aloud,students,metacognitive awareness of reading strategies improve a lot.And the frequency and accuracy of reading strategies use increase accordingly.According to the findings mentioned above,Think-aloud is recommended to be applied in English reading teaching.And English teachers should attach importance to English reading strategies teaching and the cultivation of students' metacognitive awareness of reading strategies so as to improve students' ability of autonomous reading.