A Study Orn Medical English Reading Strategies Used By Postgraduates In Inner Mongolia Medical University

The present study was intended to investigate the process of reading medical English passages by utilizing think-aloud protocol and questionnaire in the purpose of examining the reading strategies employed by medical postgraduates when they are reading medical English passages.The study will answer the following three research questions: 1.What reading strategies are adopted by medical postgraduates when they reading medical English passages? 2.What's the frequency of reading strategies employed by both high-proficiency level group and low-proficiency level group? 3.What are the differences in strategies use between test-takers with high-proficiency level and low-proficiency level? To answer the first question,thirty medical postgraduates are involved in questionnaire and to answer the second and third questions,four of them are involved in think-aloud protocol.The major findings of this study are listed as follows:Firstly,according to the Oxford's classification for leaning strategy,questionnaire found that “word-attack skill”,“skimming”,“prediction” and several other are utilized by test-takers and they are classified into six categories: cognitive strategies,memory strategies,compensation strategies,metacognitive strategies,affective strategies and social strategies.And in there,cognitive strategies are used more.Secondly,in Sheorey and Mokhtari' coding schema for reading strategies,support strategy is the most frequently used one by both high-proficiency level group and low-proficiency level group.Among all 25 strategies,“translating”;“rereading”;“paraphrasing”;“predicting or guessing text meaning”,and “asking questions” are the most frequently used by two level groups.And “using text features”;“resolving conflicting information”;“using prior knowledge” and “confirming predictions” are the least frequently used by two level groups.Thirdly,the high-proficiency level group utilizes more reading strategies than low-proficiency level group,and it is obvious in meta-cognitive reading strategies,so two level groups share the different reading strategy pattern.In high-proficiency level group,the frequency of each category from most to least is as follows: support reading strategy > meta-cognitive reading strategies > cognitive reading strategies;while in low-proficiency level group,the order is: support reading strategies > cognitive reading strategies > meta-cognitive reading strategies.In meta-cognitive category,proficient test-takers employed “predicting” most,while less proficient test-takers utilized “determining what to read” most.That is to say high-proficiency level group readers more apt to use some important clues or keywords,to guess the meaning of the text as much as possible and even predict what will happen next.In addition,readers in low-proficiency level group seem to largely understand the passage from the word level,while readers in high-proficiency level group seem more focused on the analysis and evaluation of the text to comprehend the passage.This study may offer some insights for future studies adopted similar methodologies.And offer some ideas for medical postgraduates to improve their medical English reading comprehension.