Good/Poor Learner Differences In The Use Of L2 Word Attack Strategies

The present study intends to investigate the Word Attack Strategies employed by the Chinese EFL college students while reading an English text, from a cognitive and cross-linguistic perspective, to find out the good and poor learner differences in the use of learning strategies.The learners' use of Word Attack Strategies was explored through two experiments and a survey: a reading task to elicit a written report of the strategy use; a think-aloud reading task to trigger off an oral self-report of the strategy use while reading; a survey of the learners' guessing habits and attitude. 40 Chinese EFL college students were sampled, half as good learners and half as poor learners based on the range of national CET-4 scores.This study has revealed the characteristics of good and poor learners in L2 Word Attack Strategy use: The good and poor learners were similar in the types of Word Attack Strategies employed while reading and in the quantity of their Word Attack Strategy use in terms of type distribution. Meanwhile, the good and poor learners differed significantly in the quality of their Word Attack Strategy use. As is shown in the study, good learners were able to choose more right clues, reason more effectively, adapt themselves better to the various task demands by using different Word Attack Strategies, and consequently guess the meanings of words more effectively; by contrast, the poor learners choose less right clues, reason less effectively provided that they had chosen the same types of clues as did the good learners, tended to apply fixed Word Attack Strategy patterns regardless of task variations, and therefore guess the meanings of words less effectively. Such factors as task adaptability, reading purposes, L2 exposure, L2 proficiency and inferring ability are closely related to the good/poor learner differences in L2 Word Attack Strategy use.