The Effect Of Senior High School Students' Metacognitive Strategies On Their English Reading Scores

Reading is not only an important language input,but also one of the basic ways of English learning.Reading in senior high schools is the focus of English teaching;therefore,how to help students apply reading strategies effectively to improve their English reading performance has been a common concern of many scholars and teachers,as meta-cognitive strategy is conducive to helping learners consciously use planning strategy,selective-attention strategy,monitoring strategy and evaluation strategy to effectively regulate their learning activities.In recent years,more and more researches have laid stress on the application of meta-cognitive strategies in foreign language learning and provided a new perspective for English reading teaching in senior high schools.Thus,studying the application of meta-cognitive strategies of senior high school students is of great necessity.In this study,192 students from four classes of Grade Two in a senior high school in Zhangzhou were taken as the research subjects.With the questions of“How senior high school students use reading meta-cognitive strategies and how the strategies impact on their English reading scores”as the focus,an empirical study was carried out by using the English Reading Meta-cognitive Strategies Scale designed by Professor Liu Huijun and students'reading scores,and SPSS21.0 was used to analyze the statistics by descriptive statistics,univariate linear regression and multiple linear regression.In addition,12 students and 3teachers were randomly selected for relevant interviews,which provided more sufficient evidences for the analysis of the results of this study.The results show that:1)Senior high school students'application of meta-cognitive strategy is of moderate level,and the application frequency of four dimensions of the strategy from high to low are as follows:selective-attention strategy,monitoring strategy,evaluation strategy and planning strategy.2)There is a moderate correlation between meta-cognitive strategy and English reading performance?r=0.565?.According to the univariate linear regression,equation between meta-cognitive strategy and English reading scores is y=6.688+0.226x,which shows that students'meta-cognitive strategy scores have a positive effect on their reading scores.3)In meta-cognitive strategy,only the selective-attention strategy and monitoring strategy can significantly predict English reading scores,while the evaluation strategy and planning strategy not.Therefore,English reading score is influenced by the selective-attention strategy and monitoring strategies more greatly.The multiple regression equation y=3.655+0.258 x₂+0.754 x₃?y stands for English reading score,x₂ for selective-attention strategy and x₃ for monitoring strategy?.The author gives some suggestions for English teaching based on the research.She hopes that teachers can guide students to make reading goals and plans and to monitor their reading process and strengthen the training,as well as develop their ability to summarize and evaluate reading activities.