A Study Of Reading Strategies Adopted By Non-English-Major Students

English reading ability, as one of the most important language abilities, is given the first priority in College English teaching. However owing to the influence of the deep-rooted traditional teaching method, English reading teaching in most local universities is still limited to the linguistic knowledge teaching. As a result, the students have various difficulties in reading comprehension and EFL teaching is far from satisfactory. Since the 1970s, language learning strategies have been one of the hot topics in the field of foreign language learning and have attracted much attention. However, the studies on reading strategies are still not large in number and the studies on the reading strategies used by non-English major students in local universities are even fewer, and therefore it is necessary to conduct a study in this area.Based on various theories of language learning strategies, the present study was carried out to probe into the use of reading strategies by non-English major students in local universities. The investigation tried to answer the following five questions: (1) What is the general situation of the use of reading strategies among non-English major students? (2) Are there any differences in the use of the reading strategies between high and low achievers? (3) Are there any differences in the use of reading strategies between male and female students? (4) Are there any differences in the use of reading strategy between different majors? (5) Are there any correlations between the use of reading strategies and reading proficiency?Participants were 207 sophomores from Linyi Normal University including 100 males and 107 females. The results of the study reveal that students in local universities use reading strategies moderately; they use cognitive strategies more frequently than they use meta-cognitive strategies and their reading belief is scientific. There are significant differences in the use of cognitive strategies between high achievers and low achievers. High achievers in the process of reading can make active use of the information in and outside the printed materials and consciously avoid the bad reading habit. There are no significant differences in the overall use of the reading strategies between the male and female learners. However, the females tend to use "arranging and planning" and "deduction" more frequently. As to the strategy use of different majors, the study shows that there are no significant differences between the students of science and those of liberal arts. The results also show that there are significant correlations between use of reading strategy and reading proficiency. The use of cognitive reading strategies has more significant correlations with the reading proficiency. Based on the findings of the study, some suggestions are put forward on college English reading teaching.