An Investigation On English Reading Strategies Used By Students In High Schools

Reading is rather important in learning English and has occupied an important position in the Englishlearning of Chinese students. It has been the focus for decades in both theory and practice. But the highschool students’ performance of English reading is not satisfactory or optimistic. This thesis aims atinvestigating the general situation of English reading strategies used by high school students, in order tofind an effective way of promoting English reading of high school students.Based on a review of the present related theories and studies, this thesis takes O’Malley and Chamot’sclassification as the framework, and takes the current situation of the use of English reading strategies intoconsideration. The author also makes some adjustments to meet the requirements of National EnglishCurriculum Standards for General Senior High School (2003).This investigation is conducted by means of the questionnaires. The subjects that consist of120SeniorTwo students are from two intact classes of Yanshi High School.70students are from a science class and50students are from a liberal arts class. The author mainly uses the data collected from100valid copies ofthis questionnaire to investigate the general situation of English reading strategies used by high schoolstudents, differences between high-score group students and low-score group students, differences betweenscience students and liberal arts students and differences between genders, in order to find an effective wayof promoting English reading in high school.Some major findings of this investigation are as follows:(1) The overall frequency of participants’ using reading strategies is not high. Meta-cognitivestrategies are used most frequently by them.(2) There is a statistically significant difference between the high-score students and the low-scorestudents in the use of reading strategies. Among these four categories, only an extremely significantdifference is shown in the use of cognitive strategies.(3) There is no statistically significant difference in English reading strategies used by sciencestudents and liberal arts students. But there exists a significant difference in the use of meta-cognitivestrategies. (4) There is also no statistically significant difference in English reading strategies used by differentgenders. But there are still some significant differences in the use of some specific strategies.At last, some tentative recommendations have been made for English reading teaching in high schoolson the basis of the results from this investigation:(1) Opinions on English reading strategies should bechanged.(2) Focus should be placed on the reading strategies training.(3) Extracurricular reading needsextra attention.