Strategic Reading Instruction For Chinese EFL Students: From Constructivism Perspective

Due to the important role reading plays in the proficiency structure of English majors, English teachers attach great importance to the strategic reading instruction. Strategic reading instruction refers to classroom procedures where the teacher incorporates language reading strategies in reading teaching. So far there have been four kinds of main reading strategy theories:1) the traditional reading theory (before 1960s); 2) the cognitive theory (in the middle of 1960s); 3) the schema theory (since 1970s) ; 4)the constructivism theories( which boomed up in 1970s). The constructivism theories have given the new beneficial implications for us to create the instructional model of English strategic reading. Rodger Bybee (1993) divided it into five phases: engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate. With the development of society, more and more experts and scholars have begun to engage in studying the reading strategies from constructivism perspective. The constructivism reading strategies include the three main strategies: meta-cognitive strategies, cognitive strategies and socio-cultural strategies. In addition, cultivating student meta-cognitive awareness, knowing about the complexity of reading comprehension process and its psychological process are also very important for understanding the instruction of constructivism reading strategies.Under the framework of constructivism theories, this thesis solves the following two questions: 1. To what extent are Chinese EFL students willing to take up strategic reading instruction? 2. To what extent can Chinese EFL students make improvement in reading strategy use, reading comprehension and reading performance? Besides exploring ways to student development in the English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom and strengthening students' reading abilities, through the thesis we can also make progress in the following three aspects: 1. We can better understand many basic processes of successful reading, such as the identification of letters, the mapping of letters onto sounds, and the recognition of words and syntax, with its ultimate goal of reading to read from text; 2. While teaching reading strategies, the teacher can be fully acquainted with students' reading style differences, motivational levels, cultural inclinations, interests, difficulty levels of instructional materials, the social context in which reading and teaching take place, and literacy experiences in students' L1 and L2 cultures; 3. Students can also get necessary inklings of what they should be doing in effective reading, how they should be doing it, and why, when and where they should be doing it when encountering new reading tasks. During the process of empirical study, we pay full attention to meta-cognitive awareness-raising for students and carried out strategic reading instruction successfully under the framework of constructivism theories, including scaffolding, practicing, monitoring, evaluating strategy use, etc.. Moreover, constructivism nature of the instruction, meta-cognitive awareness of the students, socio-cultural context in which students studied, students' high levels of motivation and other elements collectively took their positive effects towards the success of empirical study, facilitating students to make progress in reading strategy use, reading comprehension and reading performance. In addition, conclusion of the study, instructional implications, limitations of the study and suggestions for further study are also illustrated in the thesis.This thesis contains six chapters. Chapter One gives an introduction of the background, purpose, significance and layout of this thesis. Chapter Two gives an introduction of theoretical basis. Chapter Three gives an introduction of literature review. Under the framework of constructivism theories, Chapter Four gives a detailed introduction of empirical study for the strategic reading instruction, including research questions, subjects, study instruments and study procedure. Chapter Five introduces the results of empirical study and gives an analysis of the results. Chapter Six is the conclusion part of the thesis. It illustrates the findings of empirical study, instructional implications, limitations of the study and recommendation for further study.