Astudy Of Reading Strategies In Choosing Five Out Of Seven Alternatives Tests For High School Students Based On Think-aloud Protocols

The purpose of this study is to explore the use of meta-cognitive strategies,cognitive strategies and affective strategies by senior three students in “Choosing Five out of Seven Alternatives” of English reading comprehension.Think-aloud protocols are taken as the research method in this study.Think-aloud protocols are a kind of research instrument.In the experiment,the subjects are required to speak out the information in their minds anytime and anywhere.Ideal think-aloud data is that the subject keeps saying any information in his brain when he or she completes a specific task.Through transcription,parsing,encoding and classifying of these data,the researcher further analyzed the data.Although the method of think-aloud protocols has been widely used in the study of second language.In China,most subjects in research are college students,while students of the primary and high schools are less paid attention to.And the type of English reading material is mostly focused on passage reading.Besides,“Choosing Five out of Seven Alternatives” question type of reading comprehension in college entrance examination is different from the conventional passage reading comprehension.Therefore,using the method of think-aloud protocols to explore the use of reading strategies of high school students in reading comprehension of “Choosing Five out of Seven Alternatives” has some innovative significance and practical value.In this study,think-aloud protocols are taken as the research instrument.The purpose of this paper is to discuss the following questions.First,what is the status of the overall use of reading strategies by the subjects in reading “Choosing Five out of Seven Alternatives”? Second,what is the correlation between the subjects’ reading achievement and their use of reading strategies? Third,what are the differences in the use of reading strategies by the subjects at different levels?Through data analysis and discussion,the main findings are as follows.Firstly,for senior three students,the most frequently used strategies are cognitive strategies,followed by meta-cognitive strategies and affective strategies in reading process.Of all the sub-strategies,there are the four most frequently used strategies,namely the strategy of translating the target language into the native language,circling or underlining the important information,re-reading to increase understanding andself-questioning.Secondly,there is a positive correlation between the frequency of the use of reading strategies and reading achievement.Among meta-cognitive strategies,cognitive strategies and affective strategies,the reading achievement of different levels is only positively correlated with the frequency of the use of cognitive strategies.Thirdly,there are significant differences in the frequency of reading strategies used by students at different levels when they complete the “Choosing Five out of Seven Alternatives” tests of reading comprehension.Further research shows that there are significant differences in the frequency of cognitive strategies among students at different levels,and there are slight differences in the frequency of meta-cognitive strategies and affective strategies among students at different levels.When reading articles of different genres,there are significant differences in the use of strategies in different genres among different levels.Therefore,when teaching reading comprehension,it is critical for English teachers to impart different reading strategies to students at different levels.