An Action Research On Improving Junior High School Students’ English Reading Ability Through Meta-cognitive Strategies

English reading ability is the basis and prerequisite for developing other three language skills and improving English reading ability is the top priority of English reading teaching in junior high school.However,there are many problems of English reading in junior high school including students’ low level of English reading and lack of the awareness of strategy application.As an effective strategy for guiding learning,meta-cognitive strategies act on managing and controlling other strategies and play a crucial role in English reading teaching in junior high school.Based on it,the researcher applies meta-cognitive strategies into junior high school English reading teaching and explores the effectiveness of applying meta-cognitive strategies on improving junior high school students’ English reading ability.According to the framework of English reading ability in China’s Standards of English Language Ability(2018),English reading ability is divided into English reading strategies and English reading comprehension ability.Therefore,this thesis mainly focuses on two aspects of English reading ability and studies the following two questions:(1)What are the effects of meta-cognitive strategies on junior high school students’ English reading strategies?(2)What are the effects of meta-cognitive strategies on junior high school students’ English reading comprehension ability?The research takes 40 students from a class of Grade 2 in a junior high school in Shenyang as research subjects.The researcher uses questionnaires,tests and interviews to carry out two rounds of action research on students for three months.Each round of action research follows the steps of identifying problems,making the action plan,implementing the action plan and reflection and evaluation.Finally,the researcher uses SPSS 26.0 to analyze the data of the action research.After two rounds of action research,it can be concluded that the application of meta-cognitive strategies can improve students’ English reading ability.Firstly,the application of meta-cognitive strategies can improve students’ English reading strategies,which is reflected in the improvement of students’ global reading strategies,problem solving strategies and support strategies from a middle level to a higher level.Secondly,the application of meta-cognitive strategies can improve students’ English reading comprehension ability,which consists of the ability to summarize the main idea,extract fact details,reason and judge and guess the meaning of words.