An Experimental Study Of Reading Cognitive Strategy Training Of Senior High School Students

Reading cognitive strategy is a branch of reading strategy classified by Urquhart and Weir.It refers to the fast reading strategy which includes scanning and skimming and the careful reading strategy which includes reasoning,distinguishing theme and details,removing ambiguity,guessing the meaning of words,etc.And reading cognitive strategy training means to teach Ss when and how to use cognitive strategies in the process of input and output of foreign language.There are many researches on reading strategy,but most of them focus on some descriptive studies and seldom researches focus on a smaller and more professional perspective.This research based on cognitive psychology and discourse theory.The reading cognitive strategy training model includes the following four steps: 1)Prepare: the teacher focuses on the strategies and relevant knowledge that Ss have owned.2)Present: including explain the significance of training and the specific strategies and set an example.3)Practice: the training is carried out twice a week,one is in new lesson and the other one is in review lesson.4)Evaluate: guiding Ss to discuss with deskmates whether the strategies used by that student are effective and then reflect how many reading strategies they have used.This research takes quantitative and qualitative methods,aiming to find out(1)Whether reading cognitive strategy training has effects on Ss' self-efficacy in English reading?(2)Whether reading cognitive strategy training has effects on Ss' performance of reading comprehension?(3)Whether reading cognitive strategy training has different effects on different level Ss' reading comprehension?(4)Whether reading cognitive strategy training has different effects on Ss' abilities of doing different question types in English reading? There are 146 Ss take part in this research.74 is in the experimental class and 72 is in the control class.They are all from parallel classes in Xinjian No.2 senior high school.The design of this questionnaire mainly based on the following questionnaires and scale: Learning self-efficacy scale(Doctor Bianyufang,2002),Middle school students English self-efficacy questionnaire(Zhangye&Zhanghuan,2008),High school studentsEnglish reading self-efficacy questionnaire(Yeli,2008).The test papers used in the pretest and post-test are designed by authoritative advanced English teacher in Nanchang senior high school and Xinjian No.2 senior high school respectively.Statistical Package 17.0 for the Social Science is applied to analyze the collected data.The results of the study are the following:1)Reading cognitive strategy training can improve Ss' self-efficacy on English reading.2)In general,reading cognitive strategy training can effectively improve Ss' performance of reading comprehension3)Aiming at the high,moderate and low level Ss,reading cognitive strategy training has more significant effects on moderate and low level Ss than on high level Ss.4)According to the the five question types in English reading comprehension,reading cognitive strategy training has significant effects on factual or detailed question,main idea question,inference question,and attitude question.But it has no obvious effect on lexical inference question.The pedagogical implication of the study is that it's necessary to carry out reading cognitive strategy training,because traditional English reading teaching lacks systematic and effective reading cognitive strategy.Ss are required to recite words,phrases and passages,which causes them get tired of English learning.Good teachers should try their best to change their notion toward English reading teaching.They also should strengthen their own theoretical accomplishment of reading cognitive strategy and practical ability.