The Empirical Study of English Reading Strategies Used by Learners with Introversion and Extroversion in Rural Junior High Schools in Western China

Abstract

English reading is an indispensable skill of a second/foreign language learner. Besides, reading is one of the key points and difficulties in English teaching of junior high school. Especially, the importance of reading is reflected in the curriculum standards and the compilation of textbooks. Due to the relatively lower quality of education in rural areas than in urban areas, the author hopes to study the use of some reading strategies by rural junior high school students with introversion and extroversion to improve their English reading ability. In this paper, the author chooses 170 junior three students in Guanyingtan junior high school in Neijiang city as the participants of the study, as they have studied English for more than 2 years and have formed relatively fixed study habits and methods. The author mainly adopts questionnaire survey to do this study. Firstly, the author uses Eysenck personality questionnaire to identify the participants’ personality (introversion/extroversion). Secondly, the author uses an English reading strategy questionnaire to analyze the usage of English reading strategies by participants with introversion and extroversion. By analyzing the data collected, the author justifies that there is not significant correlation between the use of English reading strategies and rural junior high school students’ personality (introversion/extroversion). And, the author finds that metacognitive reading strategies and cognitive reading strategies are use more frequently than social/affective ones.