An Experimental Study Of Strategies-based English Reading Teaching In Junior Middle Schools

Reading strategies,as one kind of the language learning strategies,generally refer to various skills and methods adopted by learners to improve their reading comprehension and accomplish their reading tasks more efficiently.Strategies-based instruction(SBI)is to train learners to use learning strategies on purpose during their learning process in order to achieve better learning efficiency.SBI,by explicitly integrating learning strategies with ordinary classroom teaching,mainly aims at cultivating learners to be efficient autonomous learners in language learning.Researchers at home and abroad have done quite some studies on SBI and have made great achievements.However,literature review shows that empirical studies of SBI in English reading teaching in junior middle schools are relatively inadequate.Therefore,the author would try to conduct an experimental study on strategies-based English reading instruction in junior middle schools,aiming to improve English teaching efficiency and to explore new methods to improve the students' reading competence.The author did an experimental study by choosing two parallel classes,both taught by the author,of Grade One in a junior middle school in Laiyang.One is the controlled class and the other is the experimental class.And the experiment lasted for eleven weeks.The experimental class was taught in the model of SBI,while the controlled class was still taught in traditional teaching methods.The main research questions are: Can SBI in English reading instruction help to enhance the students' English reading strategies? Can SBI in English reading instruction better improve the students' English reading proficiency? By analyzing the data collected,the main findings are as follows:SBI in English reading instruction can better help students in experimental class improve their frequency of using the reading strategies which are specially trained in the experiment.After SBI,students can employ the trained reading strategies more frequently,and it also shows that they have raised their awareness of using reading strategies and they have improved the efficiency of using reading strategies greatly.SBI can better enhance students' reading proficiency in the experimental class.The students' test scores on average are 2.01 points higher than that of the controlled class,indicating that SBI can,to a large extent,promote and improve students' reading proficiency.And the scores of intermediate learners have improved more greatly,which might mean SBI is especially effective for them.