Study On English Reading Proficiency And Learning Strategies Of Chinese College Students

Learning strategies have attracted the attention of second language researchers and studies in this area have generated mixed findings. This study investigated the relationship of English reading proficiency to learning strategies used by Chinese college students in order to find out if there is any significant correlation between English reading proficiency and strategy use and if there is any significant difference in strategy use across proficiency levels. The participants selected were 94 non-English majors of two natural classes in grade two. A reading comprehension test randomly selected from College English Test (Band 4) was used to assess students' English reading proficiency and to group students into three levels according to their reading scores. A self-designed 50-item questionnaire was administered to elicit data concerning students' strategy use. One-way ANOVA was used to provide evidence that there was significant difference in the reading scores among the three levels of students. A reliability assessment of the questionnaire was conducted by inspecting the item-total correlation. Then Pearson product moment correlations were used to determine the strength of relationship between reading proficiency and learning strategies. One-way ANOVA was again used to decide significant differences in the use of strategy categories. This was followed by multiple comparisons using LSD to identify where the differences lay. Additional Chi-square tests were used to check for significant differences in the use of individual strategy items across three reading proficiency levels. The study found English reading proficiency was significantly correlated with learning strategies and that students at high level used certain category of strategies significantly more often than those at low level. Significant differences were also found in the use of some individual strategy items among the three levels of students. Implications and limitations of the study are discussed.