A Study Of Non-English Majors' Strategy Use And Strategy Training In English Reading Comprehension

Since the 1970s, SLA (Second Language Acquisition) research interest has shifted from how to teach to how to learn and study on IDs (Individual Difference) has received more and more attention in SLA research. In 1975, Rubin delineated seven strategies used by the 'good learners' in her article What the good language learner can teach us published in TESOL Quarterly. Since then, there has been a great upsurge in research on learning strategies. Research on reading strategies is one of the subjects in this field. Research from psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology indicates that reading comprehension is a complex mental process which involves conscious and unconscious use of various strategies to construct meaning on the basis of the cues in the text. In other words, the appropriate use of reading strategies is one of the factors for successful reading.This article reviewed the literature of the previous research on reading strategy. Based on theories of psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology, a six-week experiment was carried out in order to probe into the effectiveness of strategy training. The experiment was designed to answer the following questions: 1) Is there any difference between efficient and non-efficient readers in strategy use in English reading? 2) Can reading comprehension be improved by strategy training? Two groups of subjects from non-English majors participated in the experiment. One group (experimental group) received training on reading strategies while the other (control group) didn't. By comparing the results of the pretest and posttest by the two groups, the effectiveness of strategy training was examined. The results of data analysis indicated that 1) both efficient and non-efficient readers usestrategies to facilitate their reading and there was no significant difference between them with regard to strategy use in general, but some strategies were especially favoured by the efficient readers; 2) reading competence can be improved by strategy training. It also showed that integrating the strategy training into the routine teaching was quite feasible and effective.This paper is organized as following: Chapter One introduces the general goal of the present research. Chapter two expounds the rationale of the present research. Chapter Three reviews the literature closely related to the present study. Chapter Four introduces the procedures of the experiment. Chapter Five is concerned with the conclusion from the experiment and its pedagogical implications.