A Correlation Study On Metacognitive Reading Strategies,English Reading Anxiety And English Reading Proficiency Among Non-english Majors

With the development of economic globalization,the relations between countries are becoming increasingly intertwined.As an international language,the importance of English is becoming more and more obvious.In China,Non-English majors are facing the pressure of continuously improving their English language proficiency.Among the various English language skills,reading comprehension seems more important since reading is one of the most fundamentally important skill for non-English majors.Many researchers point out that anxiety in English reading has a negative effect on reading proficiency.Meanwhile,lots of studies indicate that using of metacognitive strategy exerts a positive influence on improving students' reading comprehension.Therefore,reducing anxiety in reading and adopting appropriate metacognitive reading strategy are the effective ways for students to improve their reading proficiency.However,the literature review shows that there is a few researches probing the relationship among these three factors---metacognitive strategy,anxiety and proficiency in reading comprehension,neither is the study on which reading metacognitive strategies have the greatest impact on reading anxiety.In this thesis,an empirical study will be conducted to investigate the correlation between metacognitive strategy,anxiety and proficiency in reading comprehension among non-English majors,which is significant in theory and practice.The questions addressed in this study are as follows:1.What is the status quo of metacognitive reading strategy and reading anxiety of non-English majors?2.Whether there exists relationship among metacognitive reading strategy,reading anxiety and reading proficiency?If there exists,how are they related?3.Of the four kinds of metacognitive reading strategy,which one has the greatest impact on reading anxiety and which is most influential to reading proficiency?4.Of the three kinds of reading anxiety,which one influence reading proficiency most?5.If there exists relationship among metacognitive reading strategy,reading anxiety and reading proficiency,what's the path relationship among the three variables?In this study,data are collected from two questionnaires and a reading comprehension test and then analyzed by SPSS 17.0.The subjects involved in the study are 220 non-English sophomores from North China University of Technology.The main findings are as follows:1.Metacognitive reading strategies employed by the subjects is at a medium level on the whole and they use metacognitive strategy in English reading more or less,consciously or subconsciously;Non-English majors seem to have some anxiety in English reading to some extent.Specifically speaking,most of non-English majors in this research prefer to use metacognitive reading strategy like monitoring rather than the metacognitive reading strategy such as compensating,planning as well as evaluating;the frequency of English reading anxiety the subjects suffer from is:general unfamiliar script and cultural apprehension>reading general reading comprehension apprehension by unfamiliar grammar or vocabulary>emotional apprehension.2.There is a significant correlation between reading metacognitive strategies,reading anxiety and reading levels.To be specific,(1)there is significantly negative correlation between reading anxiety and reading proficiency;(2)metacognitive reading strategy has a positive effect on English reading proficiency;(3)there is significantly positive correlation between reading metacognitive strategies and reading proficiency.3.There is significantly positive correlation between English reading proficiency and each factor of metacognitive reading strategy.Monitoring strategy has the greatest impact on reading proficiency,and monitoring is also the most influential to reading anxiety.4.There is significantly negative correlation between English reading proficiency and every factor of English reading anxiety.Emotional apprehension influences English reading proficiency the most.5.Metacognitive reading strategy and reading anxiety have a direct impact on English reading proficiency.In addition,metacognitive reading strategy has an indirect effect on English reading proficiency by influencing reading anxiety.Therefore,it is obvious that metacognitive reading strategy plays an important role in improving English reading.