An Action Research On English Reading Strategy-based Instruction In Junior High School

Reading strategy training is an important task in English teaching.However,most teachers still use the grammar-translation teaching mode due to the exam-oriented values of English learning,ignoring the cultivation of students' reading strategy and good learning habits in class.It leads to low reading ability even though a lot of time has been spent on reading practice.The low reading efficiency in turn has bored students to read more due to the lack of efficient reading strategy.In order to change the situation,the teacher needs to teach students to use reading strategies consciously,especially for students in junior middle school whose strategic ability is under development.That is the reason for this action research in which reading strategy-based instruction is conducted and reflected to enhance students' awareness of reading strategy use and reading comprehension ability in Junior Two.The subjects are 29 students in Grade 2 of a middle school in Tianjin.They were trained in English reading strategies for eight weeks.The content of the focused training covered five reading strategies,including skimming,scanning,predicting,guessing the words and inferring.Four research tools were used in this study: questionnaire,test,teaching diary,students' diary.Questionnaire and test were used as both pre-test and post-test for quantitative analysis.Students' learning diary and teacher's teaching diary were used for qualitative analysis.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows: First of all,students' awareness of using effective reading strategies is greatly enhanced.Secondly,students' reading comprehension has been improved.Thirdly,the instructional design with reading strategy stimulates students' interest in reading.In conclusion,students' awareness and ability of strategy use are improved through the training of reading strategy.This study explores how to combine reading materials with reading strategies,making reading strategies play the role of procedural knowledge,and provide valuable reference for quasi teachers to improve teaching ability in reading.