A TAPs-based Study On The Usage Of Reading Strategies In College Students’ Reading Comprehension Tests

Reading is a crucial part of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning, which is an inputting process of perceiving foreign culture. Experts have done numerous researches to help the college students read effectively. This thesis aims to find out the usage of reading strategies among China college students, and also explore the correlation between strategies use and reading proficiency level.In this research, the 15 college students as our subjects were required to take a reading comprehension test which included two passages. We used Think-aloud Protocols (TAPs) as research instrument to collect data, and extracted the strategies used by each subject. With SPSS 22.0, we conducted an independent sample T-test to figure out the differences of strategies use between readers with high- and low-proficiency level, and calculated the correlation between reading strategies use and reading proficiency level.The major findings of this research are:1) Support strategies and global reading strategies are two categories that are used by comparatively most of the readers.2) The top most-used strategies with top most frequencies are:S8— thinking about information in both English and mother tongue; S2— underlining or circling information in text; G1 —setting purpose for reading; S1— taking notes or writing down key words while reading; S6— going back and forth in the text.3) The results of independent sample T-test demonstrate that there is significant difference in the total strategies use among readers with high-and readers with how-proficiency level.4) There exists a significant correlation between the total strategies use frequency and the reading proficiency level. Results manifest that global reading strategies have the most significant correlation with reading proficiency level, which is consistent with Block’s results that global reading strategies category is the primary factor which has effect on reading proficiency level (1986).It is suggested from this study that there exists inadequate strategies use among the China college readers. Some implications were proposed at the end of the research to give some suggestions on English reading teaching.