CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
1.1 Introduction
This thesis is a case study on junior middle school students’ reading comprehensionability by applying strategy-based instruction. The study focuses on the readingstrategies used by junior middle school students in remote areas and it also comparesthe reading achievements between the experiment group and control group.During the process of teaching English, teachers frequently encounter numerousquestions like how EFL students can read more effectively. The purpose of this study is toprovide English teachers with insight into the ways to assist junior middle school studentsin the remote area in reading successfully and effectively. Most of the students in the studycome from remote areas. It is the first time for them to learn English. Although they have afew worries, they are curious about it. This research, making use of their curiosity,conducts a series of strategy training so as to develop their reading comprehension ability.Another motivation for the present study is that some students could not get an idealreading score during the examinations.
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1.2 Background to the Study
1.2.1The Importance of Reading
In the information age, English has become more and more important and necessary.Reading, one of the most important receptive skills, is a useful and vital way to obtaindifferent kinds of information and learn about the outside world. Consequently, readingplays a significant role in people’s life and study. For many students, reading is anessential language input skill which must be mastered. During second language (L2)learning and teaching, reading is one of the essential skills, especially for those peoplewho treat a foreign language as a second language. To some extent, a student’s success atschool or in society depends on their ability to read. It has been a consensus that publicschool system must pay more attention to reading instruction and training.Reading is also important in senior school’s entrance examinations. The followingdistribution analysis of the senior school’s entrance scores (see Table 1.1) shows thatreading comprehension is one of the most important items of all, covering more than onefourth of the total scores.
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CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Introduction
Since the 1970s, much research on learner characteristics and their possible influenceon the process of learning an L2 has been conducted. Meanwhile, some researchers havedevoted themselves to the study of reading strategies, which are one of the most prominentissues in the field of L2 acquisition. There are two reasons for this trend. One is thatreading abilities play a critical role in the multi-lingual and multi-cultural world; the otheris that reading is a way for L2 students to learning on their own way beyond the classroom.A large amount of research on second language reading indicates that learners applyvarious kinds of strategies to assist them with the acquisition, storage, and retrieval ofinformation(Rigney,1978). The research on reading strategies has demonstrated that it isimportant and necessary to apply proper reading strategies to make sense of the readingmaterials. Without doubt, many of the researchers have been working on helping studentsto read effectively. Some studies have discovered that “better learners who actively controltheir reading and strategy use and strategy training may be especially helpful for weakerstudents” (Schmitt, 2002, p247). Anderson(1991) proposed that successful strategicreading was not only “ a matter of knowing what strategy to use, but also... knowing howto use a strategy successfully and to orchestrate its use with otherstrategies”(pp.468—469). That means mastering and learning to use some appropriatestrategies have a good influence on English reading. Also, it also reflects that teachingsome reading strategies is the importance of English instruction. Therefore, it is necessaryand important to carry out reading strategy training, especially for new rea
