A Comparative Study Of Good And Poor Non-English Majors In Their Use Of Reading Strategies

Since the 1970s, the focus of SLA (Second Language Acquisition) research has shifted from how to teach to how to learn, and Individual Differences (IDs) have received more and more attention in SLA research. In 1975, Rubin delineated seven strategies used by the 'good learners' in her article 'What the Good Language Learner Can Teach Us' published in TESOL Quarterly. Since then, there has been a great upsurge in research on learning strategies. Research from the perspective of psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology indicates that reading comprehension is a complex mental process that involves conscious and unconscious use of various strategies to construct meaning on the basis of the cues in the text. In other words, the appropriate use of reading strategies is one of the factors for successful reading.This article reviewed the literature of the previous research studies on reading strategies. Based on theories of psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology, a survey was carried out in order to probe into the effectiveness of reading strategies used by good and poor Non-English majors. The survey was designed to answer the following questions: (1) What reading strategies are used in learners' reading process? (2) Do reading strategies influence one's reading achievements? If yes, then (3) Do good readers' reading strategies have the same predictive power as poor readers'? (4)What are the differences between good and poor readers in their employment of reading strategies? (5) Do good readers use reading strategies more successfully than poor readers?Two groups of non-English majors (the good one and the poor one) participated in the experiment. By comparing the results of the two groups, the effectiveness of reading strategy use was examined. The results of data analysis indicate that: (1) reading strategies have a comparatively strong relationship with one's reading achievements. (2) For good readers, metacognitive strategies, among the three sub-strategies, are the strongest predictors, next to them are social/affective strategies, while cognitive strategies cannot predict reading achievements. For poor readers, only social/affective strategies can predict reading achievements, but the other two strategies cannot. (3) Good readers tend to use more strategies than poor readers in performing specific reading tasks. (4) Good readers use reading strategies much more effectively than poor readers.This paper is organized as follows: Chapter One introduces the current problems in reading teaching. Chapter Two reviews and comments on the literature closely related to the present study. In this chapter four principle reading models and taxonomy of reading strategies are introduced. At the same time, the importance of interaction between the reader and text is emphasized. In Chapter Three, the subjects, the procedure and the research methods are outlined. In Chapter Four, research results and discussion will be reported. Chapter Five is Conclusion in which the major findings of the survey are summarized and its limitations are discussed.