A Comparative Study Of Reading Strategy Employed By College Student Of Arts And Science

Reading, as a complex cognitive process in language learning, has been given a high attention by a great number of researchers. Especially, the studies on the reading strategies have gained a remarkable achievement. However, researches on the differences between arts and science students in their employment of reading strategies are rare.Reading strategy, in the broad sense, is a branch of learning strategy. So in this study, Oxford's theory of language learning strategies is adopted as the theoretical foundation. The main purpose is to unfold a clear picture of differences between arts and science students in their employment of reading strategies. It is hoped that the results could provide theory basis to English teachers for reading strategies training. The answers to following questions have to be found:1) Do arts students and science students differ in their English reading proficiency?2) How do the college students use the reading strategies?3) Do reading strategies influence the reading proficiency?4) Do arts students and science students differ in their reading strategies use?The subjects of the study are all the sophomores of arts and science, and the main research methodology of this study consists of reading test, questionnaire and interviews. All the data are coded and analyzed by the professional software SPSS 12.0, the basic research methods contains Pearson correlation analysis and independent-sample t-tests. The major findings of this study are as follows:1) Science students'reading proficiency is superior to the arts students.2) Participants used reading strategies at the medium level of frequency.3) A positive correlation between reading strategies and reading proficiency reached significant level except social strategy.4) There are some differences between two groups in their employment of reading strategy.