Undergraduate And Postgraduate English Learners’ Use Of Reading Strategies And Their Reading Comprehension

Reading, in China, is not only an essential requirement to academic learning but also one of the four basic skills(listening, speaking, reading and writing) in foreign language teaching. And reading strategy is an important part in learning strategy. This study investigated the correlation between undergraduate and postgraduate English learners’ use of reading strategies and their reading comprehension setting out to explore the overall use frequency of reading strategy among English learners, whether there is significant correlation between the English reading strategies use and reading comprehension and whether there is significant difference between undergraduates and postgraduates in the employment of reading strategies.An English reading questionnaire and a reading test were used. Eighty students participated in this investigation, but seventy-seven valid questionnaires(40 undergraduates and 37 postgraduates) were collected finally. Descriptive statistics are used to describe the frequency used of reading strategies. In order to explore the difference between undergraduates and postgraduates in the employment of reading strategies, ANOVA is fully allied. At last, Pearson correlation coefficient is fully used to discuss the correlation between reading strategies use and reading comprehension.The research findings showed that all of the subjects use reading strategies at medium level with the score of 3.35 in the English reading process according to Strategies Frequency Scales of Oxford. Furthermore, through the comparison of the undergraduates and postgraduate’s mean of the reading strategy use and the analysis of the statistic of ANOVA, there are some obvious differences in the employment of reading strategy between them. Moreover, by analyzing the participants’ reading test achievement and the mean of the reading strategies, it is found that there is a significant positive correlation between them(r =.717, p=0.00), therefore, the application of reading strategies in the reading process can improve the reading grades to some extent.This paper has proved that reading strategies have a positive effect English reading, and offered some references to enhance the strategies training in teaching English reading. As a teacher, he/she should think highly of introducing the related knowledge of strategies, cultivate students’ consciousness on the use of reading strategies, and improve the students’ English reading ability with some effective reading methods.