A Study On The Relationship Among English Reading Motivations,Strategies And Proficiency Of Private High School Students

Reading is an indispensable target skill in Chinese high school English teaching.High school English education needs to be helpful for students' mental and emotional growth,and beneficial to high school graduates' further study,future survival and development.In recent years,NMET(National Matriculation English Test)of new national curriculum has proposed higher demands for candidates' English reading ability.And reading comprehension weighs so much in NMET.Therefore,to improve students' English reading ability has become top priority of high school English reading instruction.The impetus of the new round curriculum reform has put forward new requirements for high school English reading teaching.The National English Curriculum Standard(NECS)has been leading high school English curriculum to put more emphasis on training students' skills of learning and using English,and integrating the two as well.But in current reading teaching,teachers and students still pay more attention to linguistic knowledge.However,effective reading strategies and skills formed under teacher's long-term systematic training and cultivating are vital to the formation of students' English reading ability.Students in private schools are often neglected as objects of English teaching study by researchers.This paper aims to provide basis for English reading teaching and propose targeted teaching suggestions by deliberating the correlation between students' English reading motivations,English reading strategies and English reading scores,making it helpful for students especially those studying in private high schools to correct their English reading motivations and learn to use suitable strategies while reading,thus improving their independent English reading ability and becoming successful English readers.Based on relevant theories and practical studies of English reading motivations and strategies,we took students of two classes from Wuhan Pacific High School(a private high school)and Wuhan No.12 High School(a general high school,also the control school)respectively as our respondents and carried out this investigation.The survey can be divided into two parts:the questionnaire survey and English reading comprehension test.The author wants to reveal students' English reading motivations and English reading strategies through the questionnaire survey,and to analyze English reading motivations and English reading strategies according to their English reading test scores.The research shows that:Firstly,there is a significant positive correlation between English reading motivations and English reading strategies of private high school students,represented by students in Wuhan Pacific High School.Compared with students in public high school,taking Wuhan No.12 High School for example,private high school students have greater external motivations and less internal motivations.And the use of English reading strategies of private high school students has a great influence on their reading performance.Secondly,English reading motivations and English reading strategies have significant correlation with English reading proficiency,in which the correlation between English reading motivations and English reading proficiency is slightly higher than that of English reading strategies and English reading proficiency.On the basis of the above stated findings,this thesis puts forward some suggestions on English reading teaching in private high school in Wuhan.It is suggested that teachers should start from paying attention to the enjoyment of English teaching materials,and students' internal and external motivations of English reading,lay emphasis on enhancing students' English reading ability and efficiency,and promote the improvement of students' English reading proficiency by boosting the students' English reading motivations.At the same time,we can extend relevant background knowledge in teaching and raise students' ability of using English reading strategies,so as to improve their English reading proficiency by instructing students how to use dictionary and other reference books,and get more extensive English information through a variety of resources effectively.