A Study On The Correlation Between English Reading Strategies And Reading Performance Of Junior High School Students

Reading is an integrated skill.The mastery of reading strategy can help students establish proper reading awareness,enhance their ability of discourse analysis,and assist them to perceive,understand and process new information.Meanwhile,proper reading strategy will play a positive role in other aspects of English learning,so as to heighten students' comprehensive ability of using English.In order to have a better understanding of junior middle school students' reading strategies and explore whether there is a correlation between reading strategies and reading performances,this study selects 110 junior middle school students in Jinan City,Shandong Province as the research objects,gathers their reading achievements after a test,and collects their reading strategies with questionnaires and interviews.All the statistical data were analyzed by SPSS 23.0 through descriptive statistics,correlation analysis and difference analysis.The study focuses on the following questions:(1)What is the current situation of English reading strategy use among junior middle school students in general?(2)What is the correlation between reading strategy and reading achievements?(3)What are reading strategy differences among achieving students and underachieving students?Analytical data shows that:(1)Most students use reading strategies at a moderate level.The mean of the four reading strategies was between 2.67 and 3.22.Cognitive strategies are the most frequently used,then metacognitive strategies,social emotional strategies and resources strategies;(2)There is a positive correlation between reading strategies and reading achievements.The correlation levels from strong to weak are metacognitive strategies,cognitive strategies,social emotional strategies and resources strategies;(3)The using frequency of reading strategies is different between achieving students and underachieving students.Achieving students use reading strategies more frequently than underachieving students.More concretely,they use metacognitive strategies and cognitive strategies more often than underachieving students,while use resources strategies and social emotional strategies with the nearly same frequency.Based on the above results,this study provides three teaching suggestions:(1)Focus on theoretical learning of reading strategy,and systematically teach students reading strategies in English class.(2)Use cognitive strategy to overcome students' shortcomings of vocabulary and then improve their reading ability.Teachers could definitely explore students' sensory organs and visual memory to help them master more English words.(3)Increase students' interest in reading by social emotional strategies.Teachers could provide colorful topics for students,which can arouse their inner interest.