A Research Of Reading Strategies In High School English Learning

Reading is the most important purpose and also the most important means of language learning. Reading strategies refer to strategies used by language learners aiming to improve their reading comprehension, which not only deal with some certain reading skills but also the selecting and controlling activities of carrying out a certain reading aim. In recent years, more and more researches have been done in this field. It is thought that the strategy use matters much with the reading effects. Thus research on reading strategies is of great importance in language learning. The present study intends to investigate reading strategies employed by the Chinese high school students who learn English as a second language from a cognitive perspective. The author attempts to find out the differences in reading strategy use between successful and less successful learners while they are reading a text. The following research questions are to be answered.1.How do high school ESL learners differ in their reading strategy use?2.what are the effective strategies advocated to be used by high school English learners?3.What should high school teachers do to develop the students' reading comprehension competence?The study was carried out in Zhuanghe Senior Middle School. 60 students (32 girls and 28 boys) were chosen as subjects who were divided into two groups according to their achievements in English. A 5-scale questionnaire of readingstrategies was used. Computer program SPSS and T test were utilized to investigate if there were significant differences in their use bf reading strategies. And the study revealed the characteristics of successful and less successful learners of high schools in their use of reading strategies: Successful learners tended to use more metacognitive strategies like self-planning and self-evaluation. They were also skilled at using cognitive strategies like inferencing, elaboration and deduction. Social strategies such as self-encouragement and lower anxiety were more frequently used by the successful learners.Of the 11 items of reading strategies in which successful and less successful learners differ greatly, 9 of which are effective strategies:(a) Try to concentrate on the reading(b) Prepare for reading classes(c) Don't translate word by word(d) Think in English in reading(e) Plan the time before reading(f) Encourage myself to do some reading regularly(g) Guess words' meaning by their roots (h) Guess the text based on the title(i) Evaluate reading performanceThe present study aims to offer some valuable data and information for the high school English teaching and also do some basic work for the future research of reading strategies.This thesis consists of the following six chapters:Chapter 1.The author gives a brief account of the reasons why this research was done and points out the necessity and validity of carrying out this present research.Chapter 2. The rational relative to the present research is stated. The author points out that language learning is a process of interactive use of declarative and procedural knowledge and a process of solving problems.Chapter 3.Some previous researches on reading strategies are stated. The author illustrates some metacognitive and the psychological models of reading.Chapter 4.It focuses on the course of the present study. The author introduces the study methods, the subject selection, the data collection , the procedure and some other experimental factors.Chapter5.It describes and analyzes the results of the research and provides a convincing discussion.Chapter6.The author concludes the research and gives some advice to the teaches on how to develop the students' effective strategies as well as some advice on the future research in this field.