A Study On Effects Of Meta-cognitive Strategy Training On English Reading Teaching In Junior High Schools

As we all know,reading plays a significant role in our daily life.It helps us to acquire various kinds of information and learn all kinds of knowledge and skills.Therefore,it’s necessary to help junior high students to do better in English reading to reach the standard of the New Curriculum Standards and meet the requirement of society.Students and teachers have paid more and more attention to English reading teaching.However,the effect is not as good as we expect.One of the main reasons is that the students don’t know how to use English reading strategies correctly.Since the conception of metacognition was put forward by Flavell(1979),its theories and related theories have been concerned and improved by a large number of researchers.At the same time,more and more researchers have paid attention to meta-cognitive strategy training which are applied in English reading teaching.There are great many studies at home and abroad showing that meta-cognitive strategy training has had a positive effect on English reading teaching.Most of the studies in China take the college students and senior high school students as research subjects,and the research subjects from the studies abroad learn English as a native language.This study took the junior high school students as research subjects,and analyzed the effects of meta-cognitive strategy training for junior high students in English reading teaching from the two aspects: English reading interest and English reading scores.This study was based on the theory of Constructivism and Information Processing Theory.This thesis tries to make clear the following research questions:1)What is the effect of meta-cognitive strategy training on students’ English reading interest in junior high schools?2)What is the effect of meta-cognitive strategy training on students’ English reading scores in junior high schools?The participants in this research were 88 students from a middle school of Yiyang City in Hunan Province.The students were in Grade 9 and they were from two intact classes.The controlled class was taught by the traditional method in English reading;while the meta-cognitive strategy would be trained in the experimental class,and the teacher would guide the students who are from the experimental class in English reading class to use the meta-cognitive strategy properly.The experiment was designed lasting for 13 weeks,and it consisted of pre-questionnaires,English reading pre-test,meta-cognitive strategy training,post-questionnaires,English reading post-test and data collection.At last,the data would be analyzed by SPSS22.0.Major results of this study are listed in the following:1)The meta-cognitive strategy training can make students get more interested in English reading.There is a positive correlation between English reading interest and the use of meta-cognitive strategy.The students have higher interest with the more use of meta-cognitive strategy.Before the experiment,English reading interest in the two classes are at the same level.However,after the training,a significant difference was found between the two classes in English reading interest scores,and the students from the experimental class have higher English reading interest scores than those of the controlled class.2)The meta-cognitive strategy training for junior high school students can improve their English reading scores in English reading teaching.There is a positive correlation between English reading scores and using of meta-cognitive strategies.The students get higher English reading scores with the more use of meta-cognitive strategy.Before the meta-cognitive strategy training,the students in the two classes almost have the same English reading scores.After the experiment,the students who are from the two classes have different comprehension levels,and the students from the experimental class get higher English reading scores than those of the controlled class.The study enriches the meta-cognitive strategy applying to English reading teaching in junior high schools,and has some implications for English reading comprehension teaching in junior high schools.At the same time,there are certain limitations of this study,including merely partial reflection of English reading teaching through the reading scores and interest,the limited sample size and experimental time.