Improving Reading Proficiency through Effective Employment of Reading Strategies

【Abstract】Dealing with students employment of reading strategies can substantially improve their reading proficiency. For this reason， this thesis investigates the use of reading strategies by first-year non-English major students and aims to provide practical suggestions for college English teachers.

【Key words】reading strategies; reading proficiency

【作者簡介】徐琳，云南师范大学。

Ⅰ.Literature Review on “Reading Strategies”

Goodman （1967） put forward a theory that reading comprehension is a psycholinguistic guessing game.

Reading is an interactive process between reader and text （Edelskey 1988; Grabe 1991）. From this perspective， text comprehension requires the simultaneous interaction of two modes of information processing： bottom-up and top-down processing.

Reading is a process of readers integrating information from a text with their own background knowledge to make sense of the materials meaning. From this perspective， the purpose of reading is comprehension. Strategic reading is defined as “the ability of the reader to use a wide variety of reading strategies to accomplish a purpose for reading” （Nunan， 2004：68）.

Ⅱ.Research Methodology

I chose 100 first-year non-English major students to complete a questionnaire which was designed into 4 categories of learning strategies according to Oxfords （1990） classification： cognitive， metacognitive， affective and social strategy.

The students answered the questionnaire in a five-point scale： 1） I never or almost never use this strategy; 2） I do not usually use this strategy; 3） I sometimes use this strategy; 4） I usually use this strategy; 5） I use this strategy all the time. Students read the 36 statements of reading strategies， and then decided which choice is suitable for them. Finally， they wrote the number of the description most applicable to them after each item.

Ⅲ.Data Analysis

After students completed， I gathered data from questionnaire.

The raw data were processed by SPSS， and it could reveal the frequency of reading strategies used by subjects through their Mean scores. Oxford （1990） indicated that the mean score represents the frequency of reading strategies use by subjects. If the mean score is above 3.5， the corresponding strategy is frequently employed. If it is between 3.4 and 2.5， the strategy is only used from time to time. If the mean score is below 2.4， it implies that the strategy is seldom utilized.

Ⅳ.Conclusion

The result shows that， among the 4 categories of strategies， learners are likely to use cognitive strategies， especially word-attack and skimming strategies， rather than metacognitive， affective and social strategies， which are seldom applied in their reading comprehension. This indicates that first-year non-English major students are familiar with and tend to use cognitive reading strategies. However， only a few students can apply structure analysis in the process of reading， and few of them know about metacognitive， social and affective strategies.

This is possibly because teachers traditional teaching methods which focus on teaching strategies that can help learners make sense of language， namely， cognitive strategies， draw learners attention to cognitive strategies， but not metacognitive， social and affective ones. In traditional teaching methods， English teachers spend a large amount of time in teaching logical thinking and vocabulary. Students pay much attention to the mechanical memorization of grammatical rules and vocabulary. Some students even think that extra reading after class is a “waste of time”， because it is not useful for their examinations. This set of experiences and attitudes is common for college students in China. I find that their reading comprehension is poor because their way of learning English is inefficient. The findings remind us that the grasp of reading strategies by first-year non-English majors in China is limited now. They tend to do well in applying cognitive reading strategies rather than other ones. Therefore， teachers should devote more efforts to arouse students interest in this more reflective kind of strategy， which may improve their reading proficiency.

References：

[1]David Nunan，（2004）. Practical English Language Teaching， Higher Education Press.