A Study On The Application Of Meta-cognitive Strategies In English Reading Teaching In Rural Junior High Schools

The study of English reading teaching has always been a hot topic for scholars at home and abroad.However,it is not difficult to find out that the research on English reading teaching in Chinese rural area has always been one of the weakest links in this research system.Therefore,how to improve the English reading ability of junior high school students in Chinese rural area has become the important part of our research and teaching.This paper uses quantitative and qualitative methods and combines with meta-cognitive strategy questionnaires,English reading tests,semi-open interviews and other means to study the following questions:(1)What meta-cognitive strategies do junior high school students adopt for English reading comprehension before training?(2)Does the meta-cognitive strategies training affect the application of meta-cognitive strategies?(3)Is there any correlation between the application of meta-cognitive strategies and the English reading performance? If yes,what is it?This paper uses the method of empirical research.And the research has lasted for 20 weeks.In this paper,the author takes 106 junior high school students from two classes of nine grade from a rural junior high school in Fu Yang city,Anhui province as the research objects.And the author divides them into experimental class and control class.For the students in the experimental class,the author carries out a 20-month meta-cognitive strategy training in the English reading.While the students in the control class do not receive the special training.This special training focuses on the teaching of meta-cognitive knowledge and the using of three reading meta-cognitive strategies: planning strategy,monitoring strategy and evaluating strategy in English reading.Before training,in order to examine the students' application of meta-cognitive strategy in English reading,the author conducts a questionnaire to the two classes.Meanwhile,in order to test the students' reading comprehension performance,the Secondary School Entrance Exam in Anhui Province in 2018 is used.After the 20-month training,the same questionnaire and test are applied to students to investigate the differences between the pre-training and the post-training in English reading comprehension performance to explore the effectiveness of meta-cognitive strategies.All results of the questionnaire and test are typed into the computer and the data are quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed by the SPSS 21.0.The results of the study shows that:(1)Rural junior high school students rarely use meta-cognitive strategies in English reading.Among these three categories,the most used strategies are monitoring strategies,followed by evaluating strategies,and planning strategies are the least used strategies.(2)After meta-cognitive strategy training,the scores of the post-questionnaire and post-test of the experimental group students are significantly higher than those of the pre-questionnaire and pre-test.However,compared with the post-questionnaire and post-test,there is no obvious difference in the scores of the two questionnaires and tests of students in the control group who do not receive the training.This indicates that whether students are trained in meta-cognitive strategies has a significant impact on their application of meta-cognitive strategies in English reading comprehension.(3)Through the regression analysis of the post-questionnaire scores and post-test performance of students in the experimental group after training,the authors finds there is a significant moderate positive correlation between the students' application of meta-cognitive strategies and English reading achievements.Among the three categories,the scores of the planning strategies has a strong positive correlations with English reading performance,while there is a weak positive significant correlation between monitoring strategies and English reading performance.Moreover,evaluating strategies have a relatively significant correlation with English reading achievements.Based on the above conclusions,the author puts forward some constructive suggestions on how to use meta-cognitive strategies to improve the English reading performance of junior high school students in rural areas.The application of meta-cognitive strategies does affect the English reading performance of junior high school students.Therefore,teachers should firstly enrich the students' meta-cognitive knowledge and improve students' awareness of using meta-cognitive strategies in English reading and learning.What's more,teachers should encourage and help students to actively use meta-cognitive strategies in English reading and learning.Second,teachers should guide and encourage students to evaluate their use of meta-cognitive strategies in English reading process,which will help students find the more effective and suitable strategies and improve their English reading comprehension performance.