An Examination on the Theories of Reading Strategies

An important purpose of reading instruction is to encourage students to be readers with meta-cognitive ability. Over the past two decades, reading researchers and teachers have increased their concerning with meta-cognitive ability for reading instruction. In the studies of meta-cognitive ability for reading, various theories of reading strategies have been proposed. In this paper, I tried to review some theories on reading strategies in United States, and explore what are reading strategies for developing students' reading proficiencies, how those strategies activate students' reading-acts. As a conclusion, the significance of reading strategies in reading instruction was pointed out from three respects as follows; 1. to organize the strategies forreading; 2. to encourage transaction with peer students; 3. to elicit dialogic nature of reading strategies