A TAPs-based Study On The Reading Strategies Applied By Non-English Major Undergraduates

English reading strategy is vital for English reading,for it provides college students with effective ways to achieve reading goals.The relevant studies at home and abroad on reading strategy use by college students are mainly based on the questionnaire,without reflecting on the actual reading strategy use to some extent.Think-aloud protocols(TAPs)is a method for collecting data as participants are asked to talk aloud what they are thinking while completing tasks.Given the advantage that it makes mental states explicit in exploring reading strategy use in the course of reading,this thesis thus adopted TAPs to find out the reading strategy use among non-English major undergraduates,and also explored the differences between high and low-proficiency students and between male and female students in strategy use based on think-aloud protocols.The research questions of this thesis are as follows:1)What kinds of English reading strategies are used by non-English major undergraduates based on the method of TAPs?2)What are the differences in the employment of reading strategies between high-proficiency students and low-proficiency students based on the TAPs?3)What are the differences in the employment of reading strategies between male students and female students based on the TAPs?Subjects in this research were 30 non-English major college students with varied majors,and the average age was 20.The coding system of reading strategy was based on O’Malley and Chamot’s(1990)classification.We adopted the Think-aloud Protocols(TAPs)as instrument to investigate the strategy use by subjects where subjects were told to verbalize all their thoughts while reading.Interview,as a supplement to TAPs,was designed to have more detailed information about subjects’ attitudes toward reading strategy.Nvivo 11.0 was adopted to analyze the transcripts and extracted the strategies used by subjects.With SPSS 22.0,we conducted independent sample T-test to figure out the differences between high and low-proficiency students and between male and female students in reading strategy use.In addition,we conducted the correlation between reading strategy use and reading achievements.The major findings are as follows:1)Cognitive strategy,metacognitive strategy and social/affective strategy were all used by undergraduates.Cognitive strategy was used most frequently,next was metacognitive strategy,the social/affective strategy was the least used one by students.2)High-proficiency students employed more strategies and more frequently than low-proficiency students.Significant difference could be found in overall metacognitive(p=.004,p<0.05)reading strategy,but not in cognitive strategy and social/affective strategy.In addition,high-proficiency students used strategy more effectively and flexibly than low-proficiency students;there existed close correlation between metacognitive strategy and reading achievements(r=.595,p<0.01).3)Females utilized more frequently than males in metacognitive strategy,social/affective strategy and most sub-strategies of cognitive strategy.Only social/affective strategy(self-talk)existed significant difference between male students and female students(p=.013,p<0.05).