A Study of English Reading Strategies Used by Senior Middle School Students

Abstract

For the past several decades, reading strategies have aroused many researchers’ interests, but the research has mainly focused on strategy use while ignoring the function of metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. This study, based on a questionnaire, investigated the students’ awareness of reading strategy use at the senior middle school level. The major findings are, first, that there is a moderate awareness of all the strategies; secondly, the students hold a preference for Problem Solving Reading Strategies, followed by Global and Support Reading Strategies; thirdly, females show higher use of reading strategies than males in each individual category, as well as in the combined sub-categories. Also, the females are more careful and considerate while the males are more adventurous and bolder. Finally, the readers’ metacognitive awareness of reading strategies is closely linked to their language proficiency. Based on the findings above, several suggestions can be made to help teachers improve their teaching and help the students improve their reading efficiency.