Meta-cognitive Strategies And Senior High School Students’ Reading Performance

Reading is one of the most fundamental ways of learning English.In addition to grammar and vocabulary teaching in secondary schools,reading is also the focus of English teaching.Some scholars and teachers have worked to help students to use reading strategies effectively to improve their English reading ability.The use of metacognitive strategies is the strategy to plan,monitor and evaluate their learning process adopted by learners in the learning process,which further exerts a positive influence on learning activities.In recent years,there have been more and more studies concerning the influence of meta-cognitive strategies on foreign language learning,which provides a new perspective for the English reading teaching in middle school,so it is necessary to study the use of meta-cognitive strategies by senior high school students.This study took 204 grade one students in a senior middle school in Guizhou Province as the research subjects,and the research questions are as follows:“(1)What is the status quo of the meta-cognitive reading strategies used by students in senior high school?(2)What are the differences between the students with the high English level and the students with the low English level in terms of the use of meta-cognitive strategies?(3)Is there any correlation between the use of meta-cognitive strategies by senior grade one students and their English reading performance?”In this research,Zhang Lian’s scale of meta-cognitive English-reading strategy and the students’ English reading performance were used,and the analyses of data by descriptive statistics,simple independent T-test,linear regression,and multiple linear regression were carried out with the help of SPSS22.0 software.In addition,9 students and 3teachers were randomly selected to be interviewed on the use of meta-cognitive strategies in English reading,which has further supplemented the results of the qualitative analysis in this study.The following conclusions are drawn: 1)The use of the meta-cognitive strategies by senior grade one students is at a moderate level,and the frequency of using the strategies in three dimensions ranges from high to low as follows: monitoring strategy,planning strategy,and evaluating strategy;2)The meta-cognitive strategies are used more frequently by the students with high English level,and they tend to use monitoring strategies and planning strategies more frequently;the students with both English levels use the evaluating less frequently;3)there is a certain positive correlation between the meta-cognitive strategies and the English reading performance(r=0.346),indicating that the use of the students’ meta-cognitive strategies has a positive effect on students’ English reading achievement;among the three dimensions of the meta-cognitive strategies,only monitoring strategies significantly predict English reading performance,while evaluating and planning strategies do not work as a significant predictor in English reading performance.Based on the research results,this study puts forward some suggestions for the English reading teaching and the students’ reading in senior middle schools.Hope is placed on the teachers to guide students to acquire the reading strategies.In the process of English reading and the relevant training,students can plan,monitor,and evaluate the reading process,cultivating the ability of summarizing and reflecting on reading activities.