| This research centers on a description of non-English major freshmen's ( from a key comprehensive university and a higher vocational college ) use of reading strategies across different discourse modes, which may provide a basis for a better understanding of their characteristics and difference of using reading strategies. This thesis then attempts to interpret this situation from different perspectives of the learners, teachers and strategy training to draw some pedagogical implications.65 non-English major freshmen from SDU (Shandong University) and 60 non-English major freshmen from SDMVC (Shandong Modern Vocational College) were required to complete the reading questionnaire from Oxford's et al. (2004). Independent-Samples T Test, Compared-Samples T Test and ANOVA were employed to analyze the collected data, to identify the overall strategy use and frequencies of individual strategies, and also to investigate possible differences between non-English major freshmen at SDU and SDMVC. The results of the data analysis demonstrate that:1) Participants knew that they should use reading strategies to improve their reading performance, but when they faced exact reading materials, they used fewer strategies.2) Considering the RSQ as a whole, I didn't find any statistically significant difference in their use of reading strategies across different discourse modes, except a little difference in some specific items. The results also show that non-English major freshmen at a higher vocational college couldn't use reading strategies properly, which will make great contribution to our higher vocational teaching.3) Participants' reading performance in descriptions was the best, and then was the one in narrations, next one was in expositions and the worst performance was in argumentations. When facing narrations, they had a better understanding of its characteristics and structure, and therefore they used strategies more properly. In addition, they used more metacognitive strategies in narrations. In contrast, when facing argumentations, non-English major freshmen at a higher vocational college preferred compensating strategies and especially more depended on the acoustic support of reading aloud, while non-English major freshmen at a key comprehensive university could combine more strategies to maximize their reading performance. However, when they faced descriptions and expositions, they almost used the same reading strategies. These results indicate that non-English major freshmen both at a higher vocational college and a key comprehensive university were more familiar to narrations. Besides, they felt them easier. However, they felt unfamiliar to or ignored the difference among the rest three discourse modes. These results tell us a clear direction for higher vocational and key comprehensive university teaching.4) When the RSQ was considered as a whole, there was no statistically significant difference in use of reading strategies across different discourse modes between non-English major freshmen at SDU and SDMVC. This finding shows that the key difference between high- and low-proficiency learners did not lie in knowing what strategy to use but in knowing how to use a strategy successfully and orchestrate its use with other strategies. And therefore, future strategy training should focus their attention not only on letting students know what strategy to use but on the orchestration of strategies.5) When each item on the RSQ was considered, there was statistically significant difference in use of reading strategies across different discourse modes between non-English major freshmen at SDU and SDMVC. Non-English major freshmen at SDU preferred cognitive strategies while non-English major freshmen at SDMVC favored compensating ones. Both of them seldom used metacognitive ones in the rest discourse modes except in narrations.According to the above results, this research deals with a discussion from different perspectives of the learners, teachers and strategy training. The discussion indicates that:(1)Non-English major freshmen's neglect of the effect of discourse modes on their reading performance might influence their selection of strategies; (2)Teachers' neglect of insufficiency of only teaching students what strategies to use might make them only tell students strategies rather than help them put the strategies into practice;(3)Teachers' neglect of the effect of discourse modes on students' reading performance might make teachers seldom explain a text holistically from the perspective of discourse modes but only to focus their attention on language points as well as sentences. Furthermore, they might not pay enough attention to the different characteristics and structure of descriptions, expositions and argumentations;(4)Strategy training only paid more attention to specific strategies but neglected the holistic use of strategies, especially the holistic use of strategies in exact discourse mode.Such conclusions might help. non-English major freshmen be more aware of their disadvantages in use of reading strategies. In addition, they also could help teachers reflect on the present teaching practice, and scrutinize the whole teaching process to find out the possible problems, and work out feasible solutions to improve non-English major freshmen's reading performance. Based on the above findings and analysis, the final part of this research provides the following suggestions. First, teachers should be more aware of the effect of discourse modes on students' reading performance and their choice of reading strategies, so they should put the teaching of structure and characteristics of discourse modes into their daily teaching. Next, teachers should pay more attention to descriptions, expositions and argumentations besides narrations, and then integrate their structure and characteristics with strategy training. Thirdly, in practical teaching, teachers should give students' own characteristics enough attention, and then purposefully put exact strategy into exact discourse mode to train. Furthermore, to gain some help for practical teaching, this thesis also provides structure and characteristics of narrations, descriptions, expositions and argumentations as well as a practical example of expositions. |
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