Effects Of The Self-Directed Reading Strategies Training On Junior High School Students’ English Reading Ability

Reading is one of the important ways to foster students’ English ability.In recent years,the majority of English educators are increasingly concerned about the achievement of English reading goals,which has aroused their concerns about various learning strategies for reading.However,how to stimulate students’ interests in English reading and how to help students read English independently have always been the main focuses of scholars and English teachers at home and abroad.From students’ point of view,they pay little attention to self-directed reading of English and suffer from a lack of using meta-cognitive strategies and cognitive strategies in English reading,which has become the primary issue hindering students to improve English reading abilities.This research,on the basis of the theories of humanism and constructivism and in overview of the latest domestic and foreign research results,attempts to answer the following two research questions:1)What effects does the training of self-directed reading strategies have on the use of English self-directed reading strategies for junior high school students?2)What effects does the training of self-directed reading strategies have on the English reading ability for junior high school students?The second research question explores two dimensions: the ability to identify and extract written information,and the ability to summarize and analyze written information.In the experiment,the research objects are two classes of Grade Eight in a junior high school in Yueyang.The training of self-directed reading strategies won’t be adopted by the teacher to the control class in English reading teaching,while the experimental class will be trained with self-directed reading strategy in English reading teaching.The whole experiment lasts for 16 weeks,with the help of questionnaires and pre-tests and post-tests.All the data obtained will be analyzed by SPSS 23.0.The research found that: 1)the training of self-directed reading strategies can improve students’ self-directed reading abilities;2)the training of self-directed reading strategies can improve students’ abilities to identify and extract,summarize and analyze written information.However,compared with students’ ability to identify and extract written information,students’ ability to summarize and analyze written information has been improved significantly.It can be concluded that in the teaching of English reading,the training of self-directed reading strategies is imperative in developing students’ English reading abilities,thus to help students get ready for their sustainable development and lifelong reading and learning.