An Investigation Of Correlation Between College English Students' Reading Strategy And Their Achievements

Among the four language skills, reading is perhaps the most frequently used one by speakers of English as a foreign language and second language. To understand and complete the large amount of reading material by means of contributory reading strategies is essential for college students. Research has demonstrated that reading comprehension does not just understand words, sentences, or texts, but involve a complex integration of the reader's prior knowledge, language proficiency and their reading strategies.The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the reading strategies and the readers' achievements. Three instruments are used: (1) Questionnaire based on Reading Strategy Questionnaire employed by Lynn Errey and Huijie Li (2005); (2) Reading comprehension test; (3) Oral interview perspective. The subjects are 192 non-English freshmen at Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University. The data collected are analyzed by correlation analyses of SPSS 12.0 for windows.The results indicate that: 1. There is a positive correlation between the students' achievements and choices of reading strategies, especially metacognitive strategies. 2. There is a significant difference between the good readers and the poor readers in choosing reading strategies.These findings help to prove that reading strategies have a positive correlation with reading performances. For teachers, these findings might help to reinforce their confidence that helping students to develop their strategic awareness is useful for promoting success in English study.