A Study On The Application Of Reading Strategies In English Reading Comprehension Test For Junior Middle School Students

Reading is the key method of improving individual language abilities during the process of English learning. The adoption of reading strategies can help learners improve their reading comprehension abilities efficiently. In reading comprehension tests, various types of reading strategies are tested in order to examine students’ reading ability. Previous studies mainly focused on reading strategy use and training of adult language learners instead of young learners. Taking junior middle school students as an example, the author intends to investigate the current teaching and learning condition of tested reading strategies so as to give some advice on junior middle school English teaching.The thesis mainly studies the current situation of junior middle school English reading comprehension tests, the reading strategies that teachers teach and the situation of student’s reading strategy use. By examination paper analysis, questionnaire, classroom observation and interview oriented to 10 teachers and 120 students in a junior middle school, the author tries to find the gap between reading strategies tested in the exam and students’ actual use of reading strategies, and guide English teachers’ teaching of reading so as to help students improve reading comprehension competence. Key findings include: 1) In junior middle school English examinations, reading comprehension tests focus on testing guessing meaning through context, skimming, scanning, inferring, concluding, etc.; 2) The condition of students’ reading strategy use is not satisfying. They tend to read sentence by sentence, then translate the reading text before solving tasks. Comparatively, they use guessing meaning through context, skimming and scanning. Teachers pay more attention to the teaching of vocabulary, grammar and syntax rather than reading strategy. As for reading strategy, they teach strategies of guessing word’s meaning through context, skimming, scanning, inferring and concluding; 3) There is a gap between reading strategies tested and those that students actually use. Students lack the awareness of using reading strategy while reading. Their abilities of inferring and concluding are relatively weak.This research gives advice to Middle school English teachers as follows: 1) Teachers should insist on carrying out targeted reading strategy teaching and training in everyday English teaching process. They should aim at teaching students reading strategy and try to cultivate their habits of using reading strategy while reading.; 2) Teachers should pay attention to the training of student’s reading strategy use, such as skimming, scanning, guessing meaning through context, and especially inferring and judging, concluding and summarizing and so on.