Difficulties And Strategies In Academic Reading

Academic reading ability,which plays an significant role in students5 academic development and achievement,is of great importance for postgraduate students.As the international academic communication becomes more frequent,academic English reading ability is essential to Chinese postgraduate students for expanding their academic mind and obtaining information for academic research and writing.Studies have shown that English reading ability is related to the use of reading strategies.In recent years,researchers have paid attention to the analysis on academic reading process and the use of academic reading strategies.However,fewer studies have been done on the basis of postgraduate English major students.This study took Anderson’s cognitive psychology theory as a theoretical framework and designed a questionnaire on the basis of the Survey of Reading Strategies(SORS)to examine the reading processes of forty-eight postgraduate English major students in a university in Peking when they read academically.Six students were selected to have the further reading-tests and interviews for investigating their difficulties and reading strategies in academic reading.After analyzing all the collected data by a multi-method,this study showed that:1.Students encountered mainly two types of difficulties,that is,the lack of subject expertise and the lack of English language knowledge.2.All of the three categories of reading strategies in the SORS appeared in students’reading and the use of Problem Solving Strategies was on the highest frequency level.Students’ reading processes and the uses of reading strategies were different for different purposes and different individuals.Students had tendencies to search for information rather than to comprehend its meaning.Finally,according to the findings,this study gave several implications for academic learning and teaching at the level of postgraduate English major students.Limitations of this study were pointed out.