1、南亞學報第二十六期The Reading Strategies Used by EFL Technical Students- 159 -THE READING STRATEGIES USED BYEFL TECHNICAL STUDENTSShiu-chen HsuDepartment of Applied Foreign Languages, Nanya Institute of TechnologyAbstractReading is one of the most important skills to acquire knowledge in each discipline.In t
2、he information explosion times, good English reading ability is indispensable. Thepurpose of this study is to investigate what learning strategies are adopted by technicalcollege students in English reading comprehension. The author find out the way ofobtaining good reading proficiency, and this wil
3、l provide the teachers and the studentswith a more effective teaching and studying method. The subjects were four-yeartechnical college students in the Department of Applied Foreign Languages. Statisticanalysis methods, such as descriptive statistics, T-test, analysis of variance, and Pearsonproduct
4、-moment correlation analysis were adopted. The author investigates thefollowing problems concerning reading comprehension. (1) Do gender and readingproficiency play an important role in reading strategy use? (2) What strategies dostudents prefer during the process of learning? (3) What are the effec
5、tive learningstrategies in reading comprehension?Key words: English reading, reading strategy, technical studentE-mail: schsunanya.edu.twTel: 03-4361070 Ext. 7607Fax: 03-4650401南亞學報第二十六期The Reading Strategies Used by EFL Technical Students- 160 -技職學生英文閱讀策略使用之研究許淑真南亞技術學院應用外語系摘要在全球工商業國際化及資訊爆炸的時代，良好的英文
6、閱讀能力是不可或缺的。在英文的學習過程中，閱讀不僅應用最為廣泛，它也是其他三項英文能力(聽、說、寫)的基礎。而閱讀也是我們在各個學科中獲取知識的重要技能之一。本計畫之重點為探討國內技職院校學生在英文閱讀中所採用的學習策略，並歸納出達成良好閱讀成效之學習方法，以提供教師及學生做更有效教學及學習之參考。研究對象為本校四技應用外語系學生，研究方法及目的為利用T-檢定、皮爾森積差相關及多因子變異數分析等統計分析方法來探討以下項目：(1)不同性別及高閱讀成效與低閱讀成效學生的英文閱讀策略使用有何差異？(2)在英文閱讀過程中，那些學習策略是學生所經常使用的？(3)有效的英文閱讀策略有那些？關鍵字：英文閱讀
7、，閱讀策略，技職學生南亞學報第二十六期The Reading Strategies Used by EFL Technical Students- 161 -1. IntroductionReading is the foundation of all knowledge. Either the textbook or theextracurricular reading materials supply many vocabularies and phrases to readers, so asto develop their spoken language skill and writi
8、ng ability. The technical students notonly need to acquire knowledge and theories from English reading materials, but alsoneed to read many English books, periodicals or magazines for the absorption of newknowledge and information. Students often search and retrieve materials from theInternet, and i
9、t is estimated that over 70% of the information is presented in English.Good English reading ability can be helpful to effectively obtain the current informationas it is necessary. In addition, our industrial and commercial circles continuouslydevelop the internationalization and globalization. It i
10、s in urgent need of Englishtalented person. Strengthening English reading ability will be necessary for us topromote individual ability in competing.A lot of researchers and teachers have tried hard to find out possible ways to helpstudents read successfully in English, but there are many factors af
11、fect the readingproficiency of a second language. They are text types, school and social environments,students intelligence, learning motivation, teaching method, and so on. One of themost important factors is learning strategy. From the previous studies, it demonstratesthat reading performance rela
12、tes to the use of reading strategies. The reading strategiesused by efficient and inefficient learners were different Block, 1986; Singhal, 2001.With effective study strategies, the learners gain better achievement Ley 吳訓生,民89. However most of technical college students are unfamiliarwith the utiliz
13、ation of English reading strategies, and it reduces their readingcomprehension. Recently, we no longer ask the students to obtain knowledge byparroting, but to learn with organized and strategical approaches. Some researchersfound that structured reading strategies can act as learning guidance Berei
14、ter 鄒美華,民92. Therefore, besides students diligence, teachers can teachlearning strategies to help students read effectively.Many studies have shown the influence of reading strategies on EFL learners inTaiwan. Most of the subjects are students of the elementary school, senior high school,junior high
15、 school and university (Hung, 2001; Kuo, 2002;陳雅文,民92; Lin, 2005).南亞學報第二十六期The Reading Strategies Used by EFL Technical Students- 162 -This study aims to understand the reading strategy use of technical students. Theauthor expects the results of this research can suggest teachers a more effective wa
16、y ofteaching in English reading and enable students to get the twice result with half of theeffort.2. Literature ReviewReading strategies indicate how readers conceive of a task, how they make senseof what they read, and what they do when they dont understand. These strategiesconsist of a whole rang
17、e of strategies including skimming and scanning, contextualguessing, reading for meaning, utilizing background knowledge, recognizing textstructure, and so forth.2.1 Classifications of Reading StrategiesDifferent classifications of learning strategies were found in the previous studies.Rubin (1981)
18、identifies six general strategies that might contribute directly to languagelearning. They were clarification, guessing, deductive reasoning, practice,memorization, and monitoring. OMalley Palinscar Waxman however, high scoring students seemed to be applying strategies moreeffectively and appropriat
19、ely. Vandergrift (1999) concluded that the learning strategiesused by successful and less successful learners were different, and that the former madebetter use of metacognitive strategies including planning for learning, monitoring theprocess and self-evaluating learning after the tasks.2.3 Reading
20、 Strategies of Male and Female LearnersBugel (1996) found that sex-based differences appeared to be obvious in readinghabits. Females do better on questions about human relations, education, care, art, andphilosophy; males do better on economic and technological topics, politics, sports, andviolence
21、. Hung (2001) investigated the frequency and types of reading strategies usedby third-year male and female students in senior high school. The findings are asfollows: (1) There is a significant difference by gender in the reading comprehension南亞學報第二十六期The Reading Strategies Used by EFL Technical Stu
22、dents- 164 -ability. Female students are better than male students. (2) There is no significantdifference between male and female students in terms of overall strategy use. Besides,no significant difference is found between male and female students when they readnarrative and expository materials se
23、parately. Kuo (2002) investigated proficiency andgender differences in reading strategies used toward the reading comprehension tests ofthe Basic Competence Test (BCT). He stated that there is no difference between maleand female junior high school students in reading strategy use.3. MethodologyThe
24、subjects were 41 four-year technical college students in Department ofApplied Foreign Languages at Nanya Institute of Technology in 2006. Among 41subjects, 7 were males and 34 were females. All of these subjects had the sametraining programs in English courses. The questionnaire consists of 55 items
25、 with a5-point Likert scale ranging from“strongly disagree”(1 point) to“strongly agree”(5points). It is a revised questionnaire based on the previous studies (Mckeachie, 1987;Heilman, 1990;程炳林,民90;陳雅文,民92). The questionnaire was divided intofour groups: students background, cognitive strategy, metac
26、ognitive strategy, andsocial/affective strategy. Internal consistency reliability (Cronbach alpha) wasanalyzed to show how well a group of items measures the same concept. The readingproficiency was evaluated by the score of the midterm of“Reading and Discussion inEnglish III”class.The author adopte
27、d SPSS 11.0 statistical package to compute collected data.Mean value and standard deviation of each reading strategy item were analyzed bydescriptive statistics. And then, the author ranked all of the items.Independent-samples T-test was conducted to determine if there is a significantdifference of
28、reading strategy use for subjects with different sexes, proficiency levelsand abroad experience. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients werecomputed to understand relationships among three reading strategy categories. Athree-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) method was used to reveal the mai
29、n andinteraction effects of three independent variables on all reading strategy use of thesubjects. The probability level of significance for T-test, correlation analysis andANOVA was set at 0.05.南亞學報第二十六期The Reading Strategies Used by EFL Technical Students- 165 -4. Results and DiscussionThe author
30、 adopted OMalley Deegan, 1995).南亞學報第二十六期The Reading Strategies Used by EFL Technical Students- 167 -Table 3. T-test of reading strategy use for different proficiency levelsVariable ProficiencyLevel Number ofSubjects Mean StandardDeviation t pLow 14 2.61 0.38CognitiveStrategies High 14 3.52 0.37 -6.3
31、7 0.000*Low 14 2.70 0.29MetacognitiveStrategies High 14 3.60 0.32 -7.79 0.000*Low 14 2.70 0.30Social/AffectiveStrategies High 14 3.54 0.56 -4.94 0.000*Low 14 2.65 0.32All StrategiesHigh 14 3.54 0.31 -7.53 0.000* p 0.001The data of T-test for students with different abroad experiences are list in Tab
32、le 4.The subjects with living abroad experience have higher mean value of reading strategyuse. It reflects that they are more familiar with EFL reading strategy uses, but theresult of further study reveals that they got worse grades of midterm in“Reading andDiscussion in English III”class.The items
33、of reading strategy are ranked according to the mean value as shown inTable 5. Strategies with mean value higher than 3.5 are regarded as strategies withhigh frequency of usage (Oxford, 1990). The top eight strategy uses belong to highfrequency of usage and they are uniformly distributed into cognit
34、ive, metacognitiveand social/affective strategy categories. In the overall 55 learning strategies, the mostoften used strategy item is“If I have difficulty in understanding the article, I will read itcarefully.”The second one is“I usually underline the main passage of the article.”The two least used
35、 learning strategy items are“I usually write down questionsconcerning the difficult part of the article.”and“I propose some questions according tomy thought.”respectively.In Table 5, the top six reading strategies used by effective learners and ineffectivelearners can also be compared. There were di
36、fferences in both the type and frequencyof reading strategy use between them. The average of the means of top six strategy南亞學報第二十六期The Reading Strategies Used by EFL Technical Students- 168 -uses for effective learner is 4.29, which is much higher than that of ineffective learner(3.50). The author a
37、lso found that effective learners adopted”I remind myself byunderlining the words or phrases I dont understand.”and “I often check if I understandthe contents.”strategies more frequently.Table 4. T-test of reading strategy use for students with different abroad experiencesVariable AbroadExperience N
38、umber ofSubjects Mean StandardDeviation t pNo 38 3.13 0.52MetacognitiveStrategies Yes 3 3.23 0.48 -0.33 0.742No 38 3.20 0.51CognitiveStrategies Yes 3 3.57 0.40 -1.22 0.229No 38 3.14 0.53Social/AffectiveStrategies Yes 3 3.39 0.59 -0.79 0.433No 38 3.15 0.49All StrategiesYes 3 3.35 0.41 -0.70 0.491No 3
39、8 3.76 1.53ProficiencyYes 3 2.33 1.53 1.56 0.128The outcomes of Pearson product-moment correlation analyses among the uses ofthree strategy categories are listed in Table 6. All of the cognitive strategy use,metacognitive strategy use, and social/affective strategy use are significantly correlatedto
40、 each other. The correlation coefficient between cognitive strategy use andmetacognitive strategy use is as high as 0.84. It should be noted that only one of thesetwo predictors is recommended to enter the regression equation if we perform the linearregression analysis.The effects of gender, reading
41、 proficiency and abroad experience on the overallreading strategy use can be revealed by the results of three-way ANOVA analysis asthey are shown in Table 7. There is significant interactive effect of gender and readingproficiency on the overall reading strategy use. The main effects of readingprofi
42、ciency and abroad experience are also significantly.南亞學報第二十六期The Reading Strategies Used by EFL Technical Students- 169 -Table 5. The rank of reading strategy useEffectiveSubjectsIneffectiveSubjects All SubjectsStrategy Item StrategyCategoryMean Rank Mean Rank Mean RankIf I have difficulty inunderst
43、anding the article,I will read it carefully.Metacognitive 4.29 3 3.71 1 4.15 1I usually underline themain passage of thearticle.Cognitive 4.43 1 3.64 2 4.12 2I usually use the contextto understand difficultwords or sentences.Social/Affective 4.36 2 3.50 3 3.90 3I usually choose goodcircumstances toc
44、oncentrate on reading.Social/Affective 4.29 4 3.43 4 3.83 4Reconsidering thedifficult part of thearticle helps meunderstand its meaning.Metacognitive 3.86 10 3.29 6 3.68 5I imagine the image andsound described in thearticle.Cognitive 4.00 7 3.29 7 3.63 6I remind myself byunderlining the words orphra
45、ses I dontunderstand.Cognitive 4.29 5 2.57 35 3.59 7I frequently check if Iunderstand the contents. Metacognitive 4.07 6 2.57 36 3.39 16南亞學報第二十六期The Reading Strategies Used by EFL Technical Students- 170 -I propose some questionsaccording to my thought. Cognitive - - - - 2.51 54I usually write downq
46、uestions concerning thedifficult part of thearticle.Cognitive - - - - 2.41 55Table 6. Bivariate correlations between variablesVariable Cognitive Strategies MetacognitiveStrategies Social/AffectiveStrategiesCognitive Strategies 1.00 0.84* 0.75*MetacognitiveStrategies 0.84* 1.00 0.62*Social/AffectiveS
47、trategies 0.75* 0.62* 1.00* p 0.01.Table 7. Three-way ANOVA of overall reading strategy use by three independentvariablesSource SS df F pGender 0.04 1 0.37 0.549Reading Proficiency 2.55 2 12.28 0.000Abroad Experience 1.22 2 11.77 0.002Interaction:Gender * Reading ProficiencyGender * Abroad Experienc
48、eReading proficiency * AbroadExperienceGender * Reading Proficiency *Abroad Experience0.710.300.130.0021103.402.841.24-0.0460.1010.274-Error 3.33 32 - -南亞學報第二十六期The Reading Strategies Used by EFL Technical Students- 171 -5. ConclusionsThis paper investigated the English reading strategy use of four-
49、year technicalcollege students in Taiwan. According to the results, the conclusions are as follows.The most often used category is metacognitive strategy category. The second oneis social/affective strategy category. Females use cognitive strategies andsocial/affective strategies more often than males do. But, there is no significantdifference between male and female students in terms of overall strategy use. Thesubjects with living abroad experience are more familiar with reading strategy use.There were differences in both the type and frequency of readi
