Gender Differences Of Chinese EFL Learners' Learning Strategy Use And Their Reading Proficiency Level

In the existing literature, studies relating to strategy use and gender have established a great deal of evidence of gender differences. Studies on the Chinese EFL students within this field yield inconsistent results. Li Jiongying's study (2002) indicated that there is no significant gender difference on learning strategies. Her finding is contradicted with what Oxford (1988) found. Oxford's (1988) research revealed that obvious gender differences exist in learning strategies. Females were better and more often use of strategies than males. And in China, Liu Wei (2002) and Zhang Lupei (2006) found there are significant gender differences in learning strategies. All of them employed Oxford's Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL). It is obvious that continued research in this area is needed to confirm the findings.When looking at the instruments used in the previous empirical researches both home and abroad, we may find that in the area of methodological approaches, most prior studies employed Oxford's SILL as their instrument (Oxford, 1990) for data collection. In China, few researches can be found in the existing literature that employed the questionnaire designed by Wen Qiufang (1996) to assess the use of language learning strategies and look at gender difference in Chinese EFL learners reading proficiency level. This inadequacy in this field stimulates the author of the thesis to use Wen's instrument to investigate how Chinese male and female college students differ in their strategy use and their EFL reading performance with the aims to confirm whether the results of the current study are consistent with what SILL-based studies found. If inconsistent, how they differ.This thesis investigated gender differences of Chinese EFL learners' learning strategies and their reading proficiency level. The sample for this study involved 42 males and 42 females of first-year university students and 47 males and 39 females of third-year university students, non-English majors, studying at Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute in Jingdezhen, China. The study employed Wen Qiufang's English learning strategy inventory as a measure. The research made use of the reading comprehension part of the original Public English Test System (PETS). Quantitative methods were used to collect data. Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to interpret the quantitative data. Results showed that the overall strategy use by both gender fell into medium level. There were significant gender differences in learning belief and strategy use. The results of analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed gender differences favoring females in Chinese college students' strategy use. It can be found that male and female students prefer to use mother tongue to help them learn English. Females tended to use more management strategies. The results also revealed that there were obvious differences on management strategies between the successful EFL readers and the unsuccessful readers. Significant differences between males and females at the same achievement level were found on strategy-selecting, meta-affective strategies and language learning skills. There were no obvious differences between first-year and third-year EFL readers' strategy use.