A Study Of Reading Strategy Transfer For Non-English Majors

Reading plays a significant role in foreign language learning and communicating,providing necessary and effective language input to English learners. Many theories andresearches about English reading and reading strategy have been put forward and conducted.The first conception of reading strategy was presented in1970s by Olshavsky as purposefulmethods of comprehending author’s information or message. The transfer theory starts to berecognized in the1940s and1950s by the work of American linguists. Both reading strategyand transfer theory have been comprehensively studied, however, until now less attention ispaid to the transfer of reading strategy. During English teaching process, students’ Englishreading abilities are influenced by native language use, which can be reflected in readingstrategy use. Thus, this thesis aims to find out the inner-relation between the two languages inthe aspect of English reading strategy use.40students are involved as the subjects who have received formal Chinese education for12years and English education at least for7years. Two instruments are applied hereincluding two questionnaires and one interview. The questionnaires are English ReadingStrategies Questionnaires (ERSQ) and Chinese Reading Strategies Questionnaires (CRSQ).They are for quantitative study and interview is for qualitative study. SPSS16.0software isadopted to conduct statistical analysis and major findings are presented as follows:1Students have the awareness of using reading strategies and they are able to employthe majority of reading strategies.2Chinese college students’ Chinese reading strategies have been transferred into English reading in most cases. There is strategy transfer in students’ reading activity and positivetransfer takes dominant position.3The ability of students’ using reading strategy differs from persons and fields.In the end, based on major findings of present study and researcher’s teaching practice,implications shed light on future research. Firstly, teachers should clarify reading strategy usein teaching process, helping students fully understand the categories of reading strategies forbetter reading strategy use. Secondly, teachers ought to teach students to utilize the strategiesand knowledge they gain from their native language to improve English readingcomprehension. Lastly, teaching emphasis should also be placed on students’ establishinggood learning habits in order to train students to set up reading plans, self-monitor andself-evaluate during learning process.