The Application Of Metacognitive Strategies In Junior English Reading Teaching

Due to the importance of reading among the basic skills in foreign language learning, how to improve students' English reading proficiency has long been a common concern of researchers and English teachers. This thesis is a tentative study of improving students' reading proficiency from the viewpoint of the metacognitive strategy training. In the early times, great attention had been paid to the study of various teaching methodologies in order to find the most efficient one. However, there seemed to be no way not .For one thing, none of the methodologies can be said to be perfect. For another, there is no perfect methodology to everyone , if students are really treated as individuals. It was not until the 1960s that the focus of research shifted from"how to teach" to "how to learn". For the first time ,it was widely acknowledged that training students how to read was even more important. Nowdays ,the number of students is always on the rise . As a result, teachers have to face a class of 40 to 60 students, whose English reading proficiency varies a lot. In order to adapt to the new teaching environment and achieve the educational objective, teachers should consider how to foster students' ability to read independently. Drawing on the research on learning strategies at home and abroad, this thesis finally decides on the training of metacognitive strategies and probes how to integrate metocognitive strategy training into English reading teaching for middle school students.In order to test whether or not metocognitive-strategy-based classroom instruction can help to foster independent English reader and improve studnts' reading proficiency, the author carried out a12-week long teaching program based on metacognitive strategies among the 100 students in Grade Three of Han Tie Middle School .Before the program, a questionnaire based on Oxford's strategy inventory for language learning was used to assess the students' current use of metocognitive strategies .During this program, metacognitive strategy training was integrated into classroom teaching. First of all, students were not only provided with necessary metacognitive knowledge about English reading but also to reflect their own strength and weakness. students were made to realizethat reading comprehension should always be seen as a kind of process—an activesearch for meaning process; a process of an application of different kinds of knowledge; a strategic process; and an interactive process. This kind of process needed planning, monitoring, evaluating and eventually revising to ensure improved reading performance.The result suggests that although the strategy training will take up the normal teaching time, and inevitably affect the progress of the teaching program. But one thing cannot be denied that it contributes to the enhancement of students' reading motivation and helps students to plan, monitor, regulate and evaluate their reading effectively. Most important of all, once the students master these metacognitive strategies, they become the real master of their English learning, which will benefit them all their life.