A Study On The Applying Of Reading Strategies To Senior High School Students

For a long time in China, the English reading teaching has been attracting the most attention in English teaching. Students'reading ability is the key test in NMET English test.So, how can we effectively enhance the student's reading ability? Researches show that reading strategies are the main factors that affect the students'reading ability and that should not be ignored. Reading strategies are the learning strategies applied by language learners in the process of learning to improve their reading ability. They include not only the reading skills but also some selective and controlled actions used by the reader in order to achieve the desired objective.This paper reviews the study on the learning strategies and reading strategies. Having explained some theories and models in Psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology, the researcher first conducted a questionnaire survey on reading strategies among 50 students chosen randomly from the 99 students whose English class was instructed by the researcher. Then all the 99 students had a test on reading comprehension proficiency.( The test scores were regarded as the quasi-experimental pre-test scores.) According to the reading test scores, the 50 students were divided into higher-proficiency readers (the first 25), and the last 25 lower-proficiency readers. Their answers on the questionnaire were analyzed by SPSS. Data from the SPSS software analysis indicated that (1) On the whole,there was no significant difference between higher-proficiency readers and lower-proficiency readers in employing reading strategies (2) There was significant difference in using vocabulary and inference strategies. Higher-proficiency readers used the two strategies more often than lower-proficiency readers.The researcher then identified one of the two classes as experimental class, the other comparison class. The analysis of the quasi-experimental pre-test scores showed that there was no significant difference in reading proficiency between the two classes. In the next 15 weeks, the researcher carried out an experiment in the experimental class by adopting strategies-based instruction, while in the comparison class, traditional Teacher-centered teaching method continued to be employed. 15 weeks later, another reading test was given, then T test analysis showed that the scores of the experimental class was higher than the comparison class significantly, thus drawing the conclusion: reading comprehension proficiency can be improved by applying reading strategies to high school students.