Senior High School Students' Strategies In Reading English Newspaper

Currently, developing English learning strategies has become a fundamental principle in carrying out our national quality-oriented education in senior high schools. The Senior English Curriculum Standards regards learning strategy as one of the contents and goals of English course learning; moreover, it demands that during the stage of elementary education, English teachers need to help students develop various kinds of English learning strategies at different levels. In order to attain the goal, it is quite necessary and significant to conduct a survey on senior high school students'strategies in using English newspaper.Based on Student Times, the survey is carried out in the form of questionnaire, along with classroom observation and interview. In this survey 128 subjects come from Grade 2 of a key senior high school in Suzhou. And the research focuses on the following aspects of the strategies in reading Student Times : 1)the situation of using reading strategies on the part of senior high school students; 2)the situation of using reading strategies on the part of senior school students with excellent and poor academic performances; 3)the differences between boy students'and girl students'strategies in reading English newspaper.With the light of data analyses, major findings are summarized as follows: 1) Senior school students show the average level of using strategies in reading English newspaper, which is beyond the expectation. The tendency in using strategies are presented in the sequence of Affective Strategy > Metacognitive Strategy > Cognitive Strategy >Compensation Strategy>Memory Strategy>Social Strategy. 2) Students of higher level are more able to and more likely to rely on strategies than students of lower level do when using English newspaper to improve their English. 3) Girl students have better proficiency in using each reading strategy. This indicates that girl students are better at using strategies to improve their English, especially in using memory strategy and affective strategy. Finally, with regard to the shortcomings reflected in senior school students'using strategies, some suggestions are put forward to improve and enhance the situation of their reading strategy. This thesis also attempts to provide some advice and reference for the senior school teachers, so that they can, through using newspaper, make feasible plans to help their students achieve their goals in English learning.