A Comparative Study Of Reading Strategies Between English High And Low Score Students In Senior High School

Reading ability is an essential ability for high school English learners.In recent years,a large number of domestic and foreign studies have demonstrated a positive correlation between reading strategy use and reading achievement or ability.In order to identify effective reading strategies to help low score students improve their reading performance,many researchers have compared the reading strategies used by low score students with those used by high score students.However,while most of the studies show that there are differences between the two groups on their reading strategy use,a few studies still indicate that there is no significant difference between these two groups.Hence,in order to further investigate whether there are differences in the use of reading strategies between these two groups of students,this research is conducted to compare the reading strategies used by the two groups.Guided by schema theory and cognitive load theory,this research investigated 150 students in Grade 1 at a high school in Heze by using questionnaire survey,think-aloud protocol and interview.This research aims to answer the following questions:(1)What are the differences in the frequency of reading strategies used by high and low score students?(2)What are the differences in the types of reading strategies used by high and low score students?(3)What are the differences in the effectiveness of reading strategies used by high and low score students?The results show that:(1)As for the frequency of reading strategy use,the frequency of overall reading strategy use and various kinds of reading strategy use of high score students is significantly higher than that of low score students.(2)As for the types of reading strategy use,there is no significant difference between these two groups.Four of the top six most frequently used reading strategies are the same for both groups.(3)As for the effectiveness of reading strategy use,there is a significant difference between these two groups.Compared with high score students,low score students are not able to regulate the strategies effectively to construct meanings from the text and finish reading tasks successfully.Furthermore,based on the combined results of questionnaire survey and thinkaloud protocol,the eight reading strategies which are commonly used by high score students and are significantly different from those used by low score students are repetition,reasoning deductively,splitting,inferencing,highlighting,cooperating with others,summarizing and guessing words.Therefore,teachers should regard these strategies as key strategies to conduct strategy training to low score students.The findings in this research provide further evidence that there are differences in the use of reading strategies between high and low score students.Besides,it summarizes reading strategies that have significant differences between these two groups,providing key strategies for teachers to do reading strategy training.