An Empirical Study Of Reading Strategies Training

Language learning strategies are methods and ways consciously selected by language learners in word guessing, word remembering, application of grammar rules and other language aspects to improve their language proficiency. The research of language learning strategies was initiated by Rubin, Naiman, Frohlic and other American and Canadian linguists in the 1970s. Up to date, the research has involved: 1) strategies used by good learners; 2) differences in language learning strategies application by good and poor learners; 3) the correlation between learners' use of language learning strategies and their language proficiency; 4) factors influencing language learners' strategies use and 5) strategies training and its effects. It falls into the following four categories: listening strategies, speaking strategies, reading strategies and writing strategies.Reading strategies refer to strategies used by language learners aiming to improve their reading comprehension. It not only contains some reading skills such as making global inferences, making lexical inferences, skimming and scanning and so forth, but also includes selective and restraining actions taken by readers for certain purposes. Reading strategies can be gained through training.Reading strategies training refers to activities in which readers make effective use of reading strategies to cope with reading material in a foreign language under the instruction of a teacher. Reading strategies play an essential role in college English teaching, as it will do readers a favor to improve their reading comprehension ability so as to achieve their reading targets. Besides, it is also valuable to discover the most appropriate way of reading to oneself and strengthen the ability of independent learning, thus making preparations for lasting studies.In China, studies of reading strategies are rare and most of them center on different applications of reading strategies between successful and unsuccessful learners and correlation between strategies use and reading achievements. It is uncommon to find studies of reading strategies training and its results. As for the...