Predictors For Chinese College Students' English Reading Achievement

It is generally believed that learners' motivation, use of learning strategies, negative L1 transfer, and positive L1 transfer are closely related to their final language achievement. However, it seems that previous studies were too general in describing the influence of these factors upon language achievement. It is still unclear how much each factor influences learning achievement separately, and how these factors influence it jointly. Therefore, using regression analysis, the present study explored how well learners' English reading motivation (RM), use of English reading strategies (RS), negative L1 transfer (NT), and positive L1 transfer (PT) can predict their English reading achievement (RA), and which set of the observed variables best predicts it.In September, 2008, 58 sophomores from College of Economy and Management, Southwest University, Chongqing participated in this study, 54 of whom were valid subjects. Data elicitation was mainly based on two self-designed questionnaires, an adopted questionnaire, and a reading test.The results of the current study indicated that Chinese EFL learners' reading motivation, reading strategies, NT, and PT were extremely significant predictors for their reading achievement. And the four factors differed in their predictive power, with reading strategies possessing the greatest predictive power (RA=-53.554+0.683~*RS), which accounted for 74% of the variance in reading achievement.As for the joint prediction of these factors, the regression analyses suggested that among 10 combinations of them, PT was an insignificant predictor for RA in 9 analyses, while RS was the most convincing predictor for RA, as it had the highest Beta Coefficients.Furthermore, with an Adjusted R Square of 0.809, the model that included RS, NT, and RM was statistically extremely significant in predicting RA, and was constructed as the best model for predicting RA (RA=-62.456+0.462~*RS+0.187~*NT+0.224~*RM).The findings of this study imply that all of the four factors in question should be emphasized in second language teaching, and RS should be the most important part, as all of them are significant predictors for RA, while RS is the most robust one.