A Study On English Reading Strategies Of Chinese Non-English Major College Students

Reading strategies are considered as particularly important in English learning. The study of reading strategies has been undertaken actively by psycholinguists and cognitive linguists in recent years. Many researchers indicate that instructions on reading strategies improve reading comprehension and language performance, and that differences exist in application of reading strategies between successful learners and unsuccessful learners. However, there are still some limitations in these researches. First, the number of subjects is too little and most subjects are western students. Second, researchers usually concentrate on the effect of one single individual reading strategy rather than the whole strategy inventory. Finally, few empirical researches have been carried out to testify the influence of some individual factors on the use of reading strategies. In view of the above-mentioned limitations in the previous studies in reading strategy, this study attempts to overcome such limitations and tries to combine reading strategies with some individual difference factors.A questionnaire and an interview are adopted in this study to investigate the application of reading strategies and learning motivation among college students. Specifically, the research addresses the following research questions: (1) How are the reading strategies applied among the students in general?(2) What is the relationship between reading strategies and reading achievements?(3) How do strong readers differ from weak readers in the application of reading strategies?(4) What is the effect of some individual factors on reading strategies use? The subjects under the investigation are 341 non-English major freshmen in China University of Petroleum. Among them 55 students with highest scores in reading test are chosen as strong readers and another 49 with lowest scores in reading test are considered as weak ones. The three statistical instruments (descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, and independent sample T-test) are used to analyze the data obtained from the questionnaire.The six major findings are concluded in this study:(1) Non-English major college students tend to apply reading strategies moderately in the English classroom.(2) Reading strategies significantly correlate with reading achievements.(3) There are significant differences in the application of reading strategies between strong readers and weak readers.(4) Cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies both play important roles in reading comprehension.(5) Chinese college students tend to have more instrumental motivation than integrative in learning English. And motivation significantly correlates with reading strategies.(6) There is no significant difference between male and female in the use of reading strategies. This research is supposed to be significant in the following three aspects.(1) It provides authentic and useful guidelines for the further study in the research area related to reading strategies adopted by college students in China.(2) It may be of value for college students to cultivate their effective reading strategies and improve their reading efficiency.(3) It can also be helpful to raise the teachers'awareness of reading strategies and to enhance their abilities to instruct students.