Effect Of Gender And English Proficiency On Students' English Reading Strategies Used By Senior Middle School Students

Since the late 20th century, research on individual differences in L2 acquisition has focused on tracing what factors may affect the way students learn a L2 and finding out the mutual correlation between these factors and language learning strategy use. Of many various learning strategy categories, reading strategy deserved much noticing for it is regarded as one significant approach to help a student develop an independent and automatic reader.This study, by reviewing the relevant studies of the effect of language proficiency and gender on reading Strategy use, explored the relationship of English proficiency and gender to students'reading strategy use. For an in-depth sight into senior middle students'English reading, the author elucidated the effect the two factors have on their reading strategy use by virtue of Biggs'SAL(Student Approaches to Learning) theory framework. Biggs'SAL framework emphasizes not only variables on factors such as cognitive style, personality, and values, but teaching presage factors such as the teaching/learning contexts, institutional setting would have effects on students'strategy choice.In this study the author employed the questionnaire'Survey of Reading Strategies'developed by William Baker and Kamonpan Boonkit (2004). A total of 157 students from one Middle School in Jiangxi province were administrated to complete the questionnaire and all the data were entered into SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science) 11.5 for windows for statistical analysis. Descriptive Statistics,Independent Sample T-test and Correlation Analyses were used respectively to analyze the data for answering research questions.The results of this study demonstrated:firstly, on the whole students reported a moderate, or slightly low overall strategy use and compensation, metacognitive, cognitive strategies were reported using more frequently than memory, social, and affective strategies. Secondly, the findings revealed that students with high English proficiency used most strategy categories significantly frequently than low level students. Only affective strategy category was not affected by students'language proficiency. Thirdly, as regards gender factor, there were no statistically significant differences in their overall strategy use between males and females; however, females reported significantly frequent use of compensation and metacognitive strategies than males.Based on the above findings, some pedagogical implications can be drawn. To help students develop better, more strategic readers, teachers should raise students'awareness of strategy use and arouse their intrinsic motivation of reading; do whatever they can to improve students'language proficiency; concern about students'personality and their preferences in strategy use in order to provide a wide range of appropriate strategies to meet their needs.