An Experimental Study On The Effect Of Inferential Strategies Training In English Reading On High School Students' Inferencing Ability

Inferencing is a major ability of the human cognitive faculty.In English learning,it means through proper training,the learner is able to guess the meaning of new words based on the context,to identify the gist and the author's attitude,and to combine textual information with their own experience to make correct inferences.The Chinese Ministry of Education has made it a requirement in the latest full-time ordinary high school English curriculum standards that this ability be developed in the students through English education.However,no training method is universally recognized and accepted as ideal in basic English education.In addition,the questionnaire results of the current research show that in spite of some subconscious use of reading strategies,not necessarily of the referencing kind,the lack of related knowledge and consciousness of proper use is a major cause for the problems in reading comprehension.Therefore,based on scaffolding theory and schema theory,this study is designed to conduct an experiment aiming to explore how to train high school students' inferencing ability by using inferential strategies in high school English classes.Two research questions are raised to be answered:1)What effect does the inferential strategies training in English reading have upon high school students inferencing ability?2)What effect does the inferential strategies training in English reading have upon high school students' reading comprehension ability?The current research is carried out in a high school in Heyuan City,Guangdong Province,involving 104 fresh students of high school,with 52 in the experimental class and the other 52 the control class.The research project begins in September,2017 and ends in December of the same year,lasting a total of 13 weeks.During this period,all participants engage in continuous reading training,with only the experimental class receiving inferential strategies training,in which the trainees are explicitly taught to make and apply inferences in reading.In the control class,by contrast,conventional teaching methods,namely,adopting grammar-translation,fast reading and intensive reading,are adopted to make sure that the students understand the main ideas of the text and are able to analyze the structure of the text,and reading comprehension exercises are given as homework to strengthen their understanding comprehension,in disregard of their inferencing ability.During the teaching intervention,the students' learning progress is monitored through homework assessment for need of timely adjustment of the level of difficulty,duration and intensity of training.One of the instruments of the pre-tests is the inferencing ability test,in which the questions are taken from two popular critical thinking scales,WGCTA(Watson-Glaser Critical thinking Appraisal)and CCTST(California Critical Thinking Skills Test).While the other instrument is the reading comprehension test for measuring students' reading comprehension ability.A questionnaire is used to collect specific information about students' reading strategies use and problems in reading comprehension,aiming to support the research.The teaching intervention lasts for 12 weeks,with one session each week.Then,two post-tests are conducted to measure the change of students' inferencing ability and reading comprehension ability.The questions in the inferencing ability test are adopted from WGCTA and CCTST and the questions in the comprehension ability test are adopted from Heyuan City High School English Senior One Simulation Test.The pre-tests and post-tests are basically equal in difficulties,and both possess high validity and reliability.According to the data analysis,the major findings of this research are as follows:1)The inferential strategies training in English reading has a positive effect on the cultivation of inferencing ability of high school students.2)The inferential strategies training in English reading also plays an active role in promoting reading comprehension ability of high school students.3)It is suitable to utilize an explicit approach to teach inferential abilities.Students are able to make inferences correctly and efficiently since they are clear to the process of inferencing and schemata on which inferences are made.This research demonstrates the effectiveness of the schema theory when applied to inferential strategies training.Based on the results,it is safe to conclude that due to constraints,there is no guarantee that the experimental results will be applicable to subjects with different situations.The reference and reliability of the study could have been further improved if the samples had been enriched.Secondly,researchers should remember that linguistic schema is the most basic foundation for effective inferencing and full comprehension.