高三学生英语阅读策略研究(问卷调查).doc

临沂大学外国语学院本科毕业论文07届 分类号：G 633.41 单位代码：10452 学士学位论文论文题目：Strategies Employed by Third-Year Senior High School Students in Reading Test学生姓名：李 四学 号：200404140328专 业：英 语班 级：2004级本科20班指导教师：张 三外国语学院2008年5月Strategies Employed by Third-Year Senior High School Students in Reading TestA ThesisPresented toForeign Language SchoolLinyi Normal UniversityIn Partial Fulfillment of the RequirementsFor the Bachelor Degree of ArtsBy Li SiUnder the Supervision of Zhang SanJune 200829 AcknowledgementsI would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to those who have helped me in many ways. Without their help, I couldnt complete my thesis successfully.First of all, Id like to express my sincere thanks to my supervisor Mr. Zhang San for his valuable and specific advice on the shaping and sharing of my ideas, and for his tolerance and patience in correcting my drafts. Every progress of mine is due to his encouragement and instruction. His unconditional support and encouragement help me overcome much difficulty.Secondly, I am also indebted to all the teachers in Foreign Languages School who have helped me directly and indirectly in my studies. Their courses have expanded my scope of knowledge and enhanced my interest in English study. Any progress that I have made is the result of their profound concern and selfless devotion.Finally, I am obliged to my classmates who accompanied me during the years of study, giving me such vital encouragement. AbstractThe purpose of this study is to investigate reading strategies used by third-year senior high school students, and to detect the differences in strategy use between higher and lower achievers. The instruments involved in the study included a questionnaire to investigate the overall pattern of the participants strategy use and some interviews to gain a deeper understanding on their response to the questionnaire items. A reading test was administered in advance of the questionnaire survey. One week after the administration of the survey, the interviews were performed.After the analyses of the data, the researcher yields the following research findings:(1) Cognitive strategies were sometimes used by the participants, among which Repetition, Understanding and Inferencing were frequently used. Of the other cognitive strategies, forming the question, Guessing, Using-mother-tongue, Note-taking and Revision were sometime used, while Predicting was seldom used by the participants. (2) There are differences between high achievers and low achievers in their adoption of reading strategies. Of all the metacognitive strategies, high achievers tended to employ Self-management and Planning; they did not use Self-evaluation and Selective attention frequently. Low achievers tended to employ Self-management; they use planning rarely; of the cognitive strategies, high achievers adopted Understanding, Repetition and Inferencing frequently, while they rarely used Predicting. Low achievers adopted Repetition frequently, while they never used Predicting and used Revision rarely. Key words: reading; metacognitive strategies; cognitive strategies; reading test 摘 要本研究旨在调查高三学生英语阅读策略的使用特点和高、低分组学生在阅读策略使用上的差异，从而帮助高中教师了解学生阅读策略使用的特点，有助于老师指导学生正确使用学习策略，提高阅读能力。研究主要通过问卷调查并辅以访谈收集数据。阅读理解题选自高考模拟试题，用以测试学生的英语阅读能力。研究发现：1高三学生有时使用认知策略，其中，重复、理解和推测策略经常被使用。在其他认知策略中，形成问题、猜测、使用母语、做笔记和修补策略有时使用，预测策略很少使用。2高分者和低分者在策略选用上存在差异。在元认知策略中，高分者倾向于使用自我管理和计划策略，他们不经常用自我评估和选择性注意策略；低分者经常使用自我管理策略，很少使用计划策略。在认知策略中，高分者经常使用理解、重复、推测策略，而几乎不使用预测策略；低分者只经常使用重复策略，而很少使用修补策略，也从来不使用预测策略。关键词： 阅读；元认知策略；认知策略；阅读测试Contents1. Introduction11.1 The Need of the Study11.2 The Organization of the Thesis22. Literature Review32.1 Definition and Classification of Language Learning Strategies32.2 Empirical Studies Concerning Reading Strategies42.2.1 Empirical Studies Abroad42.2.2 Empirical Studies at Home52.3 Significance of the Present Study53. Methodology63.1 Research Questions63.2 Research Design63.2.1 Participants63.2.2 Instruments73.2.3 Data Collection103.2.4 Data Analysis104. Results and Discussion104.1 The Overall Pattern of Reading Strategies104.1.1 Metacognitive Strategies124.1.2 Cognitive Strategies124.2 A Comparison between High Achievers and Low Achievers135. Conclusion155.1 Major Findings of This Study155.2 Pedagogical Implications of This Study165.3 Limitations of This Study17Bibliography18Appendix21Appendix 231. Introduction1.1 The Need of the StudyFor high school students of English，reading is the most important skill of the five basic language skills (listening，speaking，reading，writing and translating), and plays an extraordinary important role in both English language acquisition and international communication and cooperation. Reading is a tool for learning. Through wide and efficient reading，students enlarge their vocabulary，master the grammar rules and learn how to organize an article，thus laying a good foundation for developing speaking，listening，writing and translating skills.However, how can students read efficiently? As the traditional approach to English reading learning has long been the grammar-translation approach，it is not easy to make changes and to adopt the new communicative approach，emphasizing “how to learn” rather than “how to teach”. Therefore, although many students now realize the importance of English reading ability，they still experience difficulties in reading English. It is not uncommon to hear from the students that they cant get the main idea after reading a Passage over and over again. It seems that no matter how much reading they have done in or out of the classroom, they cannot hope to get satisfactory results. Consequently，the students feel frustrated after trying so hard in vain. Gradually，they loose both interests and confidence.On the one hand, students neglect of a careful examination of reading strategy may be held partly responsible for their frustration and diffidence in English learning. Some students attach importance to only what they have learned from their reading. They emphasize only comprehensions as the sole product of reading practice, such as scores on reading comprehension test, but not the process. On the other hand，much English reading teaching at present still takes articles or essays as linguistic substance at a large extent. Making use of reading materials the teachers mainly pass on linguistic knowledge such as pronunciation，vocabulary，grammar and so on. With the misplaced emphasis，students often fail to develop their ability to get information from the readings by utilizing scientific approaches and strategies.According to what we know as the psychological process of reading, reading comprehension is a complex cognitive process which various subcomponents such as decoding skills, knowledge of text structure，schematic knowledge and processing strategies. All of them interact simultaneously to help readers construct coherent meaning from texts (Goodman, 1967). According to Smith (1971, 1979, 1982), reading is an active process of comprehending, and students, therefore, need to use strategies that will facilitate them to read more efficiently in their reading performances (e.g., to guess from context; to make inferences about the text; to skim ahead to fill in the context).The present study aims to make an investigation on reading strategy use by third-year senior high school students in their English learning. It is assumed that explicit strategy use will help senior high school students to improve their reading comprehension. The findings will help teachers to become aware of the importance of reading strategies in students English reading processes by presenting an overall picture of strategy employment of senior high school students. Subsequently, teachers can develop teaching strategies to foster students reading strategies employment, or can provide them with expert guidance in the use of reading strategies. 1.2 The Organization of the Thesis The thesis consists of five parts. Part One provides a general introduction to the need of the study. The author explains why she carried out the study. The organization of the study is also presented. Part Two introduces relevant terms and theories, supplies the theoretical background on which the studies were developed and relevant empirical studies in this field. Part Three reports the present study which includes the research questions and designs, the subjects to participate in, the instruments to be used, and the methods of data collection and analysis to be adopted. Part Four presents and discusses the research results in accordance with the sequence of research questions. Part Five is about the conclusions of the study. It not only summarizes the major findings of the study, but also points out some inherent limitations and some educational implications. Finally, some further studies are recommended.2. Literature ReviewThis part consists of three sections. The first section introduces the definition and classification of the key terms frequently referred to in the present study. Section two presents a review of related studies that have been conducted in this field. The final section provides the significance of the present study.2.1 Basic Concepts2.1.1 Definition and Classification of Language Learning StrategiesMany famous scholars have defined learning strategies in different ways. Here we list some definitions that they are influential both at home and abroad.Rubin (1987) provided a definition for learning strategies as “strategies which contribute to the development of the language system which the learner constructs and affect learning directly.”Oxford (1989) referred them to “behaviors or actions which learners use to make language learning more successful, self-directed and enjoyable.” Ellis (1994) considered them as “production sets that exist as declarative knowledge and are used to solve some learning problem.”OMalley and Chamot, (1990) have attempted to ground the study of learning strategy within the information processing model developed by Anderson (1980). Based on the cognitive information processing view of human thought and action, they defined learning strategies as “the special thoughts or behaviors that learners use to understand, learn and remember new information.” In accordance with the information-processing model, OMalley & Chamot (1990) divided their strategies into metacognitive, cognitive and social/affective strategies. Metacognitive strategies are higher order executive skills that may entail planning for, monitoring, or evaluating the success of a learning activity. It includes Planning, Self-management, Self-evaluation, and Selective attention. Cognitive strategies operate directly on incoming information, manipulating it in ways that enhance learning. As far as reading strategies are concerned, cognitive strategies in this study may refer to: Repetition, Contextualization, Inferencing, Directed physical response, Translation, Note-taking, Deduction, Imagery, Transfer, and Elaboration.Social/affective strategies represent abroad grouping that involves either interaction with another person or ideational control over affect. It includes Cooperation, Questioning for clarification.The present study involves the previous two types of strategies, i.e., metacognitive strategies and cognitive strategies. 2.1.2 Reading StrategiesIn the present study, reading strategies refers to various measures adopted by language learners to deal with reading both consciously and unconsciously, from controlling the process of reading, i.e., planning, self-managing, evaluating, or self-evaluating the success of process of reading activity, to understand reading materials, to predict what is to come in reading process, to choose the question answers.Based on OMalley & Chamots (1990) framework of learning strategy, reading strategies are divided into two major classes: metacognitive strategies and cognitive strategies. The metacognitive strategies include Planning, Self-management, Self-evaluation, and Selective attention. Cognitive strategies include Understanding, Repetition, Revising, Inferencing, Predicting, Forming the question, Note-taking, Using-mother-tongue and Guessing. Meta-cognitive strategies:Self-evaluation refers to checking comprehension after completion of a receptive language activity, or evaluating language production after it has taken place, evaluating ones own progress, judging how well you learned the material.Selective attention refers to focusing on special aspects of reading tasks. As in planning to read for key words, phrases or topic sentences; using varied reading skills.Cognitive strategies:Repetition refers to imitating a language model, including over practice and silent rehearsal.Revising refers to using previous knowledge to understand the reading materials or spending much time in difficult questions or changing answers according to the new clues.Inferencing refers to using available information to guess meanings of new items, predict outcomes, or complete missing parts.Predicting refers to using the structure, content of the reading materials to predict what is to come in reading process.2.2 Empirical Studies Concerning Reading Strategies2.2.1 Empirical Studies AbroadResearches on English reading strategies have been widely conducted abroad.In respect to Rubin, her contributions to language learning strategies are that, by means of observations of behaviors and questionnaires, she investigated the learning strategies used by good language learners in studying languages. She made a conclusion that there did exist similarities in terms of characters of psychology and learning approaches (Shu & Zhuang, 1996).OMalley et al. (1989), selecting intermediate-level ESL students at the second level as subjects, found that there was significant difference between effective and ineffective readers in strategy use. Effective reader made greater use of self-monitoring, elaboration and inferencing. The subjects contained five effective and three ineffective listeners. The standard for effectiveness was subjective because it was set by the subjects teacher.Stavans and Oded (1993) assessed EFL reading comprehension of 10 Ethiopian college students by think-aloud method. They found unsuccessful students approached the reading tasks using similar strategies to those used by the other successful students with the same frequency. Strategies used by the unsuccessful and successful students were “using clues in the text”,“using textual organization”, “inferencing”, “guessing”.2.2.2 Empirical Studies at HomeSeveral researches on reading strategies have been conducted by domestic scholars in recent years. Liu (2002) investigated more than 300 non-English majors over their English-reading strategies. Her research showed that Chinese students used various strategies in their readings, including the metacognitive strategies and cognitive ones, and those successful learners used more strategies than those unsuccessful ones. Chen (2003) conducted a study on non-English majors strategy use in English Reading comprehension and found that both efficient and non-efficient readers used strategies to facilitate their reading, that there was no significant difference between them with regard to strategy use in general, and that some strategies were especially favored by the efficient readers. Lin (2001) conducted a study into 80 second-year Chinese non-English major undergraduates in a college, she found that effective readers employed reading strategies more consciously, frequently and flexibly and their scores were significantly higher than ineffective ones who seldom did so.2.3 Significance of the Present StudyA detailed review work has focused on the investigation of reading strategies. There are extensive studies abroad with mixed findings in this respect. Some knowledge has been gained about the strategies used by language learners and such research has provided insights into the language reading process. However, some problems with previous studies still exist and much room remains for further study. In China, there is little experimental research with regard to reading strategies, and those experiments existed some weaknesses.Firstly, most of the studies focused on students at the tertiary level, whereas studies of students at the basic educational level (e.g. senior high school students) remained a neglectful area. Secondly, from the above type of studies, the question whether good readers employ any different reading strategies from bad readers is not known.Thirdly, due to the classification of learning strategies (OMalley & Chamot, 2001), the findings of these researches are difficult to compare between studies.In an attempt to bridge this gap, the present study aims to investigate English reading strategies employed by the senior high school students. Equal attention is also paid to the differences between high achievers and low achievers in their adoption of reading strategies. The classification by OMalley & Chamot was adopted in this study, which is more reasonable than previous studies.3. MethodologyThis chapter focuses on the research methodology in the present study. Instruments involved in this study are a reading test, a questionnaire and some interviews through which the researcher gained a deeper understanding of the subjects beliefs on reading stra