A Study Of Differences In Metacognitive Awareness Of Reading Strategies Between Successful And Unsuccessful EFL Readers

The present thesis gives a detailed report of a study examining differences in the perceived use of reading strategies handling English intensive reading between successful EFL readers(SUS) and unsuccessful EFL readers(URS) in China under the theoretical framework of second language acquisition,theory of language learning strategy,reading strategy,and metacognition.Subjects in this research were 71 English-major students of further education who completed a questionnaire concerning the students' background information, a questionnaire examining students' perceived use of reading strategies adapted from metacognitive awareness of reading strategies inventory(MARSI) developed by Mokhtari and Reichard(2002) and a reading comprehension test quoted from the collection of papers of TEM4.The Statistical Package for the Social Science(SPSS,13.0) software was used to process the data obtained. Descriptive statistics,independent samples t-test,Pearson product-moment correlation,ANOVA were adopted to analyze the data.The major findings of the research are:1.The statistically significant difference between successful readers and unsuccessful readers exists not only in the overall strategies,SRS group mean being considerably higher than the URS group for the overall reading strategies use,but also in the category of global reading strategies and problem-solving strategies,with the exception of support strategies.2.Both SRS and URS show a clear preference for global reading strategies but in the other two categories,SRS prefer problem-solving strategies to support strategies while URS prefer support strategies to problem-solving strategies.3.SRS show a higher reported usage for most individual strategies than URS, with the exception of two strategies(confirming prediction and using reference materials).4.To some extent,reading scores obtained from the reading proficiency test are correlated with scores of perceived overall reading strategies use and problem-solving reading strategies.Specifically,six individual strategies highlighted in table 14 are identified to be correlated with reading scores. Coefficients between reading scores and overall reading strategies usage is 0.027(sig.=0.05) and problem-solving reading strategies is 0.021.Based on these findings,the author believes it is important for all readers, successful or unsuccessful,to be aware of the strategies needed for proficient reading.It is suggested that teachers can heighten students' awareness of strategy use by:finding out student's current strategy knowledge,identifying their strategy needs,planning strategy instruction,providing students opportunities to practice applying strategies,evaluating students' strategy usage.In addition to enhancing students' strategy use awareness,intensive reading teachers should attach importance to imparting linguistic knowledge and activating students' previous knowledge—the two important factors involved in facilitating students' reading comprehension,hence,making intensive reading instruction more effective.