There have been many studies investigating the use of reading strategies among EFL students in Taiwan (Cheng, 2008; Chen, 2009; Hus, 2007; Hong –Nam & Leavell, 2006;
Ikeda & Takeuchi, 2006; Lau & Chan, 2003; Tseng, 2008; Tsai, 2010). Cheng’s (2008) study aimed at examining the overall and specific types of reading strategy use among EFL college students. It also examined the effects of English proficiency and gender on strategy. There were 217 college English majors who participated in this survey. The reading strategy questionnaire included five types, such as memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive and social-affective strategies. The finding in the study showed that the most frequently used strategy was metacognitive strategy. Also, there was no significant difference among high, mid and low achievers in their overall choice of strategies and specific types of strategy use,
proficient students applied more reading-aloud, skimming, guessing from the context, and analyzing sentence patterns and grammar structures strategies than low proficiency students.
Namely, high proficiency students apply more reading strategies to help them in reading, but low proficiency students apply fewer strategies.
Chen’s (2009) study involved 190 junior high school students in grades 7, 8 and 9. He intended to examine the relationship among grade levels, perceptual learning style preferences, and language learning strategies. The instruments were perceptual learning style preference questionnaire and the strategy inventory for language learning. Results showed that significant relationships were found to exist between grade level and tactile style, kinesthetic learning style and individual style. It was also reported that significant relationships existed between grade level and the memory strategies, cognitive strategies, affective strategies and social strategies. This demonstrates that grade level, strategy use and learning styles are interrelated. Thus, it was crucial for teachers to understand individual differences of their students and ensure that their course information design suitable for students in different grade levels.
Based on the college students’ midterm exam scores, Hsu (2009) employed a revised questionnaire developed by O’Malley and Chamot (1990) to examine forty one technological college students’ English strategy use in reading courses. The results showed that for all of the college participants, the most frequently used strategies were metacognitive strategies and the least frequently used were cognitive strategies. Females used more cognitive and social-affective strategies than males, but there was no significant difference between male and female students in terms of the frequency of overall reading strategy use. Significant gender differences were found in the type of strategy use, rather than in the frequency of overall strategy use. Besides, effective readers tended to apply strategies more frequently than their less-effective counterparts in terms of overall strategy use. Differing proficiency readers tended to use different strategies while reading.
In order to understand the learning strategy use of EFL students with different culture and linguistic background in a college Intensive English Program, Hong-Nam and Leavell (2006) selected a self-report questionnaire, the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning, to assess the frequency of use of language learning strategies. There were 55 ESL university participated in the study. Results showed that students used metacognitve and social strategies more frequently than any other strategy during their learning. ESL students preferred to use metacognitive strategy to control, plan and organize their learning process. The intensive learning environment of the IEP program may be the factor influencing their selection of metacognitive and social strategies. The sooner they pass the program, the sooner they can start to take regular university coursework. Metacognitive knowledge can enhance their academic performance go hand in hand. The IEP may also pay an important role in high use of social strategies for participants because the learning environment in IEP had a very student-oriented philosophy curriculum and was full of native speakers. The instruction of the IEP encouraged and supported more interactive learning for the purpose of developing linguistic fluency. This was the cause why students in the IEP selected social strategy morn than other strategies.
The aim of Ikeda and Takeuchi’s (2006) study was to reveal the differences in the process of learning reading strategies by EFL learners with different proficiency levels. There were 10 Japanese female college students learning English were analyzed. Results showed that prominent differences between two groups. High proficiency group used more than one strategy than low proficiency while learning English. High proficiency learners knew the purpose of the merit of each strategy use than low proficiency learners. High proficiency understood the condition where a certain strategy can be used effectively but low proficiency learners did not well understand. High proficiency achievers considered combined use of
Teachers also can show students some concrete examples of effective strategy use to low proficiency achievers in order to facilitate them to use strategies in reading.
In 2003, Lau and Chan were intended to analyze the reading strategy use and motivation among Chinese good and poor readers. They selected 83 good readers and 76 poor readers in Hong Kong to compare their ability to use reading strategies in Chinese reading comprehension. Results showed that poor reader scored lower than good readers in using all reading strategies and especially in applying cognitive and metacognitive strategies. Based on the performance on the test, it could be inferred that poor readers were only able to apple simple strategies, such as deleting unimportant sentences and understanding the surface information in narrative text. Poor readers were poor performance on those sections assessing sophisticated cognitive strategies and metacognitive, such as construction, summarization, and inference and identifying main idea in the text. it also indicated that students’ ability in suing reading strategies was an important factor in reading comprehension. It suggested that we could enhance poor readers’ reading comprehension via direct reading instruction.
In order to investigate the effect of metacognitive reading strategy training on junior high school student’ EFL reading comprehension. Tseng’s (2008) study was conducted to test 30 junior high school students of the seventh grade. The students were divided into two groups of high proficiency and low proficiency. It aimed at investigating the differences of metacognitive reading strategy use between high and low proficiency groups, the perceptions of reading, English reading comprehension and students’ response to the metacognitive reading strategy training. It took four weeks to train students’ metacognitive reading strategies.
The finding of the study suggests that the metacognitve reading strategy training can increase high and low proficiency readers’ metacognitive awareness of strategy use. Besides, the training of metacognitive reading strategy can enhance students’ metacognitive awareness of strategy use and reading comprehension, especially for low proficiency students. Finally, most of the students showed their positive attitude toward the effectiveness of the
metacognitive reading strategy use. They also represented their high willingness to use metcacognitive strategies and to learn new reading strategies to facilitate their English reading comprehension. Tseng’s study clearly demonstrates that reading strategy training can help students learn English effectively.
In his study, Tsai (2010) investigated Applied English and International Business majors’ cognitive learning styles, strategy use and motivation in Business English courses.
The researcher conducted a survey among 203 Applied English majors and 179 International Trade majors at a university in Southern Taiwan. The subjects are sophomore, junior and senior students. In order to examine the relationship among cognitive learning style, learning strategy and learning motivation, the researcher employed a self-designed questionnaire for data collection. The findings of the study reveal that both Applied English international Trade majors highly preferred emotion style, whereas social style was the least preferred style as they took Business English courses. As for reading strategy use, Applied English majors adopted metacognitive strategies more frequently as they dealt with Business English but adapted social strategies the least. International Trade majors applied metacognitive strategy most frequently but cognitive strategies the least. As for the motivation, International Trade majors were not specifically oriented on either integrative or instrumental motivation in learning Business English but the Applied English majors were more instrumentally oriented rather than interactively motivated in learning Business English.
To sum up, there is a significant relationship between strategy use and reading performance. Teachers should be aware of their students’ reading strategy use and teach them how to use appropriate reading strategy in English reading, so that the students may become more effective language learners.