Training On Reading Strategies And The Application In Junior Middle School

This study was designed to examine the effects of strategy training on the reading ability of EFL junior middle school students. Namely, it aimed at investigating what reading strategies could be successfully adapted to an EFL junior middle school reading classroom situation in China. It was also to examine how students with different reading proficiency were influenced by the training method.In the early period of the study, the two methods of observation and questionnaire are used. And an experiment was conducted in which two parallel classes of seventy-five eighth grade junior middle school students were assigned into an experimental class(N=40) and a control class(N=35).Both groups participated in the same 18-week reading program, the only difference being that the experimental group students received the strategy instruction of clarification, summarization and prediction and required to demonstrate their use of the strategies. At the first week of the experiment, both the experimental and control groups were given a pre-test to measure their reading comprehension performance and the reading strategy questionnaires to elicit what they usually did in reading activities. At the end of the experiment, the same test and the questionnaires were administrated again to determine students' improvement in reading performance and the change of strategies use. Results of the experimental group were compared with those of the control group. These results were analyzed rationally.Results of this study revealed that the reading strategy training did improve EFL junior middle school students' reading proficiency. First, the experimental group outperformed the control group on reading comprehension tasks. Second, the present study demonstrated that intermediate and high proficiency readers might benefit more from the training than those low proficiency readers. And the amount of gains made by the intermediate reading proficiency group was found to be much greater than that made by the high proficiency reading group. Finally, the study revealed that the students' ability of making inferences from given passages, of grasping main ideas and of tackling new words was significantly enhanced. Based on this study, some pedagogical implications were drawn: It is necessary to implement the teaching of reading strategies on junior middle school students. Direct and explicit strategy training should be included in reading classes. It is helpful to fit in with the needs of different proficiency readers in strategy training and it is important to help the students to master basic language knowledge while carrying out the strategy training.