A Comparison In English Reading Strategies Of Chinese Non-english Major College Skillful And Struggling Readers

This thesis reports on an investigation into 110 freshmen in Liaoning Technical University, including 55 regarded successful readers and 55 struggling readers. The writer observed their reading performance and analyzed the data collected by SPSS Version 15.0 to further investigate their strategy awareness and strategy use.The four research questions addressed in this study are:1. For skillful readers, what is the situation of reading strategies use including the most and least frequently used strategies? How do learner variables (gender, L2 proficiency, major, efforts and motivation) affect the choice of reading strategies?2. For struggling readers, what is the situation of reading strategies use including the most and least frequently used strategies?3. Are there any significant differences between skillful and struggling readers in terms of students'use of reading strategies and what are they?4. Do the levels of reading ability affect the use of reading strategies and reading proficiency?Compared with more successful readers among all the subjects under investigation, the low-achieving reading group has their distinctive patterns of strategy use. In order to ensure the reliability and validity of the present research, both quantitative and qualitative research methods have been employed.Meanwhile, the verbal reports have provided valuable evidence for showing the strategy used by unsuccessful readers at different phases in the experiment. Data collected showed that there is great correlation between the frequency of strategy use, meta-cognitive strategies use in particular, and their reading performance.The findings have indicated that non-proficient readers have apparently increased their awareness of strategy use when engaged in English reading, and the correlation between attempted use of taught strategies and improved reading performance has been calculated significantly.Foreign language teachers are also advised to pay more attention to struggling learners and equip them with useful learning strategies to facilitate their English learning.