| Since the 1970s, there has been a steadily growing interest in considering the learning process and in changing the focus of classrooms from a teacher-centered one to a learner-centered one. In particular, there is growing interest in defining and classifying how learners can take charge of their learning in the skill areas such as the area of reading. Reading is an interactive process between reader and a text. Therefore, it is assumed that different types of texts will influence the readers' preferences of choosing reading strategies, and readers from different disciplines may choose different strategies in reading English texts. Most of the research concerning reading strategies was conducted in the West, so it is felt that the study in Chinese context might throw a new light upon the assumptions about learning strategies use in reading. More specifically, the research paper attempts to answer the following questions:1. What is the current situation of Chinese college EFL students' strategies use in reading?2. Are there any similarities or differences between science and liberal arts college students in terms of strategies use in their reading?3. What strategies do those students frequently use when they read scientific and literary articles respectively?Both descriptive and qualitative researches were used in this paper. 141 subjects, who were non-English majors from science and arts colleges respectively, were asked to answer questionnaires. This study aims at investigating their strategies use in reading process. This questionnaire was a revised one of Strategies Inventory for language Learning (SLL) (Oxford, 1990). The score of each question ranks from 1 to 5, which indicates different frequency. Second, out of the 141 subjects, 4 were selected for an in-depth study (2 science and 2 liberal arts students). They were expected to take a reading proficiency test which contains one technical and one literary passage from Band-4 text. During the test, they were asked to think-aloud when they read the passages, and the aim was to find out what strategies they use during the test. Third, the questionnaire and passages were computerized and analyzed with SPSS (11.0). The main findings are described as below:1. Chinese EFL learners do use language learning strategies in their reading, namely, matecognitive strategy, cognitive strategy, and social/affective strategy. They can be put in descending order according to the mean scores: affective strategies (M=3.4601), cognitive strategies (M=3.3333), metacognitve strategies (M=3.1128) and social strategies (M=2.4858).2. Affective strategies are the most frequently used strategies employed by EFL learners. Compared with students who major in liberal arts, the students who study science employed affective strategies more frequently.3. There was no significant difference between female and male students in their use of metacognitive, cognitive and affective/social strategies, but showed significant differences in certain items of strategies, such as item 1 "In order to improve my reading ability, I usually make and carry out reading schedules" (p＜.05), item 3 "I choose the material which I enjoyed" (p＜.05) and item 6 "I choose the material which is suitable to my ability" (p＜.01), item 10 "I keep a positive attitude toward learning English" (p＜.05) and item 11 "I continuously encourage myself when facing difficulties" (p＜.01), and item 17 "I usually use context to infer meaning" (p＜.05).4. There was no significant difference between students who major in science and those who major in liberal arts in their use of metacognitive, cognitive and affective/social strategies, but showed significant differences in certain items of strategies. The mean of affective strategies by students who major in science was 3.625, which was higher than that of students who major in liberal arts. (M=3.395). The mean of metacognitive strategies by students who major in science was 3.1948, and students who major in liberal arts got 3.1918. Students who major in science got a 3.3378 mean on cognitive strategies, students who major in liberal arts got 3.2652. The mean by students who major in science and the mean by students who major in liberal arts on social strategies were 2.5227 and 2.481 respectively. And it is also indicated that there were significant differences in the specific items, such as item 3 "I choose the material which I enjoyed" (p＜.05), item 9 "I try to adjust my anxiety and mood"(p＜.05), and item 18 "I usually use reasoning and analyzing when facing problems in reading" (p＜.05), item 25 "I paraphrase what I read" (p＜.01), and item 31 "I usually participate in group discussion to help my understanding" (p＜.05). Together with the mean score of each strategy, it is inferred that students who major in liberal arts used "material selection" more frequently than that of students majoring in science, and the means were M=4.0566 and M=3.6364 respectively. Students who studying liberal arts may stress the material itself compared with that of students who studying science. Mean scores of the strategy "analyzing and reasoning" used by students majoring in science was higher than that of students majoring in liberal arts, which are M=3.6136 and M=3.3019 respectively. It may be due to the characteristics of these two groups of people, students who majoring in science studies may use logical thinking more frequently, so that their score of this strategy was higher than that of students learning arts. And the mean scores of students majoring in science used "paraphrase" (M=3.1932) and "resourcing" (M=3.1609) were higher than those of students majoring in liberal arts, which were 2.7547 and 2.9434 respectively.5. In the study of think-aloud, the author found that the strategies in reading technical and literary texts have similarities and differences. When they read the literary text, they reported using more frequently strategies such as "skimming for main ideas, guessing meaning from context through inferences, outlining the words interesting and anticipating text contents", they focused on the content of the passage and they felt relaxed. By contrast, they used "scanning for the information they need.", "Encouraging reading continuously" "using dictionary to find the interpretation of the key words" in reading the technical text. And they focused on the information selection of the whole passage and reluctant to read unless it is necessary.To sum up, it is hoped that this study would help both Chinese EFL teachers and students get more understanding of reading strategies use and throw some new light on strategies training.
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