The Research On The Strategy Use In English Reading Comprehension Test

Reading is one of the most important skills in English learning. For decades, it has attracted many researchers' interest. And they have explored it from multiple angles. The researcher intends to study reading comprehension from another point of view, i.e., strategy use in reading tests, with the hope to shed some light on reading comprehension.The thesis gets an integrated understanding of the processes of reading comprehension in reading tests, based on the communicative language ability and the other relevant theoretical fruits, such as learner strategy, test-taking strategy, reading models, reading processes and so on. By the empirical study, the researcher studies the relationship between cognitive and metacognitive strategy use and the reading comprehension test performance;and how the highly successful, moderate successful and unsuccessful test-takers differ in the use of strategies;as well as the relationship between types of questions and the performance in reading test.After quantitative and qualitative analysis, the researcher finds that reading comprehension in reading tests is a special kind of language use and the strategies used in reading test is also language use strategy. It can be influenced because of the different characteristics of test-tasks and the individual differences of the test-takers. The strategy use is highly test-task oriented. The cognitive and metacognitive strategies used are useful for the good performance in reading test and can discriminate the successful students and unsuccessful students. Inference questions have a high correlation with the test performance. It can also discriminate the successful students and unsuccessful ones. The thesis also analyzes the problems that affect the choice of the right answers in reading comprehension test and discusses the pedagogical implications. It provides some suggestions for the further studies.The thesis includes four chapters:The first chapter gives a brief introduction;The second one provides literature review and the theoretical basis of the study including learner strategy (language learning strategy and language use strategy), test-taking strategy, language ability and communicative language ability (CLA), reading comprehension, the models of reading (bottom-up model, top-down model and interactive model) and the processes of reading (the lower levels and the higher levels). And the author summarizes the understanding on the reading comprehension in reading tests: according to the CLA, reading comprehension is a special kind of language use and the strategies used in reading test is also language use strategy. The communicative language ability is the basis of reading comprehension. Strategic competence is crucial in CLA. It controls the orchestration of theother factors of CLA in the process of reading comprehension in reading tests. According to the characteristics of the test tasks and the characteristics of test-takers, the metacognitive and cognitive strategies are used to comprehend the passages and accomplish the test-tasks.The third discusses the empirical study including research questions, research design, procedures and the data analysis, and then interprets its results, and provides pedagogical implications. The research collects the data by reading tests, questionnaire, and interview and make quantitative and qualitative analysis of the test performance, types of questions fro comprehension, and the relationship between the strategy use and test performance, the relationship between the strategy use and the proficiency of test-takers, the relationship between the strategy use and the types of questions for comprehension.The last chapter makes a conclusion and gives some suggestions for the further study.