A Study On The Correlations Among Reading Self-efficacy,Reading Strategies And Reading Achievement Of Non-english Freshmen

Self-efficacy is learners’ belief in their capability to succeed and acquire new information or complete a task or activity to an appointed level of performance.Self-efficacy,as an important concept in educational psychology,personality psychology,and social psychology,has received extensive attention.At present,the researches on self-efficacy at home and abroad has been involved in the fields of academic,health education,psychological counseling and treatment,career choice,management and so on.In the academic field,many studies have shown that there are significant correlations between academic self-efficacy and achievements,strategies,autonomous learning,motivation,anxiety,gender differences,etc.However,the studies of self-efficacy in English listening,reading,writing,and speaking remain to be further explored.English reading is an essential skill and an effective way to improve students’ comprehensive English competence.Therefore,how to improve effectively students’ reading ability has been the focus of language researchers.Researchers at home and abroad have shown that one of the main factors affecting reading achievement is reading strategy.Although there have been fruitful researches on reading strategies,a few studies explored the effects of individual differences on reading strategies use,and the perspective of the study needs to be expanded.Based on the previous researches,the present study will address the following questions:(1)What is the current level of non–English freshmen’s reading self-efficacy? Which may influence non–English freshmen’s reading self-efficacy most among students’ sense of competence,sense of setback-challenge and sense of effort?(2)Does non–English freshmen’s reading self-efficacy influence their reading strategies use?(3)Does non–English freshmen’s reading self-efficacy influence their reading achievement?(4)What are the correlations among non-English freshmen’s reading self-efficacy,reading strategies and reading achievement? Which one has the main effect on non-English freshmen’s reading achievement?Considering that the English proficiency and vocabulary level of the subjects affect their reading achievement,the present study chose 150 subjects from non English Major Freshmen in Lanzhou Jiaotong University,who have 3500-4500 vocabulary size and the English score of NEMT from 90 to110.And all of those participants were chosen from B-level classes according to their English proficiency in college entrance examination.Based on the reading self-efficacy scale,the participants were classified into high,middle and low readingself-efficacy groups.Furthermore,the data of reading self-efficacy scale,reading strategy questionnaire and CET4 were sorted and analyzed by SPSS16.The results were as follows:(1)The current level of non-English freshmen’s reading self-efficacy is at the middle level,and students’ sense of effort has the greatest influence on their reading self-efficacy level.Specifically speaking,students have negative judgment about their reading self-efficacy so they have the lowest level of sense of competence.And students hold indifferent attitude in the face of setback-challenge so their sense of setback-challenge is at the middle level.However,the students have a higher evaluation of their efforts,so their sense of effort is at a higher level.(2)Non-English freshmen’s reading self-efficacy affects their reading strategies.Readers with high reading self-efficacy can use cognitive strategies and meta-cognitive strategies better than those with low reading self-efficacy,but there is no significant difference in compensation strategies use between high and middle reading self-efficacy groups.(3)Non-English freshmen’s reading self-efficacy affects their reading achievement,among which sense of competence has the greatest influence on reading achievement.In specific,high reading self-efficacious readers get better reading achievements than those low reading self-efficacious readers,but there is no significant difference between those subjects with moderate reading self-efficacy and those with higher reading self-efficacy.(4)There are significant correlations among Non-English freshmen’s reading self-efficacy,reading strategies,and reading achievement and the reading self-efficacy plays the main effect on reading achievement.In addition,the reading self-efficacy indirectly affects reading achievements by the influence of reading strategies.According to the results,some pedagogical implications are drawn for how to improve the teaching effect of English reading.Firstly,teachers should realize the role of reading self-efficacy and pay attention to it in teaching.Secondly,in order to help students develop good sense of reading self-efficacy,teachers should design steps in teaching design:(1)Teachers should provide positive feedback and encouragement to students who have low evaluation of reading competence to make them aware of their potential and advantages,and help them improve their confidence in improving their reading ability.(2)Teachers should set up some successful examples of similar characteristics to students in order to make students have courage to face the setbacks and challenges in reading practice,and then to improve their reading ability.(3)Teachers should guide students to set reasonable goals and create teaching situations to enable students to experience more success,which help to increase students’ interest and motivation in reading.(4)Attribution training should be conducted for students to guide them to attribute correctly and reasonably.Teachers should lead students toattribute success to their own competence and effort,and to explore effective reading strategies to improve their reading ability in the process of reading.