台灣高中英文快速閱讀測驗研究 - 政大學術集成

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(1)國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士班碩士論文. 指導教授：尤雪瑛博士. 政治大. Advisor: Dr. Hsueh-ying Yu. 中文題目. 學. 台灣高中英文快速閱讀測驗研究. Nat. al. 英文題目. er. io. sit. y. ‧. ‧ 國. 立. n. v i n C h Reading in Taiwan Testing English Expeditious Senior High School engchi U. 研究生：張捷撰 Name: Chieh Chang 中華民國一 o 四年一月 January, 2015.

(2) Testing English Expeditious Reading in Taiwan Senior High School. A Master Thesis Presented to Department of English, National Chengchi University. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學 sit. y. Nat. In Partial Fulfillment. io. n. al. Master of Arts. Ch. engchi. By Chieh Chang January 2015. er. of the Requirements for the Degree of. i n U. v.

(3) Acknowledgement My warmest thanks go to the following people. Without their support, this thesis could not come into existence. First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude and greatest appreciation to my advisor, Dr. Hsueh-ying Yu, for constantly offering insightful guidance and heart-lifting encouragement throughout the work. Dr. Yu has been an amazing role model as a researcher and a teacher. It is a great blessing to have such a wonderful mentor in my life. Also gratefully acknowledged are the two committee. 政治大 me considerable assistance and helpful suggestions on research design, data analysis, 立. members, Dr. Yi-ping Huang and Dr. Yow-yu Lin. Dr. Huang, who had been giving. and further refinement of this work.. ‧ 國. 學. My sincere appreciation also goes to Joe Lee and Rachel Tseng, the senior high. ‧. school teachers who generously offered me the opportunity of conducting this. sit. y. Nat. research at their English classes and hospitably provided their aid throughout the. io. er. process. In addition, I would like to extend my gratitude to two of my TESOL classmates, Linda Lee and Jill Juang, who had been helping me with proofreading. n. al. Ch. reading tests and with timely words of cheer.. engchi. i n U. v. Last but not least, I want to thank my beloved family, especially my parents and my sister, who had been accompanying me throughout this long journey. If it had not been for their unconditional love, full support, and daily prayers, I could not have completed my thesis. I also want to bless the Lord, my shepherd. He makes me lie down in green pastures, leads me beside quiet waters, and comforts me with his rod and staff. I will dwell in Your hose forever. May glory be given to God our Father forever and ever.. iii.

(4) Table of Contents Acknowledgement…………………………………………………………….... iii. Table of Contents……………………………………………………………….. iv. Chinese Abstract………………………………………………………………... vii. English Abstract……………………………………………………………....... viii. Chapter 1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………... 1. 1.1 Background and Motivation……………………………………………... 1. 政治大 1.3. Significance of the Study……………………………………………….. 立. 4. 1.2 Research Purposes and Research Questions……………………………... 2. Literature Review…………………………………………………………….... 學. ‧ 國. 5 7 7. 2.1.1 The Nature of Reading………………………………………………. 7. 2.1.2 Reading in EFL Context…………………………………………….. 9. ‧. 2.1 Reading……………………………………………………………………. sit. y. Nat. io. er. 2.1.3 Reading Strategies…………………………………………………. 2.2 Expeditious Reading…………………………………………………….... n. al. Ch. n U engchi. iv. 10 11. 2.2.1 Constructs of Expeditious Reading……………………………….... 12. 2.2.2 The Use of Expeditious Reading………………………………….... 16. 2.2.3 The Negligence of Expeditious Reading in Pedagogy……………... 17. 2.3 Testing of Expeditious Reading…………………………………………... 18. 2.3.1 The Expeditious Reading Test in the International English Language Testing System (IELTS)—Academic Module……........................... 18. 2.3.2 The Expeditious Reading Test in the College English Test (CET) —Band 4 and Band 6…………………………………………….... 20. 2.3.3 The Expeditious Reading Test in the Test for English Majors (TEM)—Band 4 and Band 8……………………………………… iv. 21.

(5) 2.3.4 The Expeditious Reading Test in the The General English Proficiency Test (GEPT)—Advanced…………………………….. 22. 2.3.5 The Negligence of Expeditious Reading in Testing……………….. 23. 3. Methodology……………………………………………………………….... 25. 3.1 Participants………………………………………………………………. 25. 3.2 Instruments………………………………………………………………. 26. 3.2.1 Careful Reading Test………………………………………………. 26. 3.2.2 Expeditious Reading Test………………………………………….. 30. 政治大 3.2.4 Expeditious Reading Questionnaire………………………………. 立. 36. 3.2.3 Expeditious Reading Mock Test………………………………….... 3.3 Procedure……………………………………………………………….... 學. ‧ 國. 36 39 39. 3.3.2 Data Analysis………………………………………………………. 40. 4. Results and Discussions…………………………………………………….... 41. ‧. 3.3.1 Data Collection…………………………………………………….. sit. y. Nat. 41. io. er. 4.1 Reading Performance……………………………………………………. 4.1.1 Performances on Careful Reading Test and Expeditious Reading. al. n. v i n Ch Test………………………………………………………………... engchi U. 41. 4.1.2 Performances on Three Major Expeditious Reading Constructs…... 45. 4.1.3 Performances by Different Proficiency Groups……………………. 47. 4.2 Reading Strategy…………………………………………………………. 50. 4.2.1 Strategy Use in Expeditious Reading Test…………………………. 50. 4.2.2 Strategy Use by Different Proficiency Groups…………………….. 54. 4.3 Reading Difficulty……………………………………………………….. 59. 4.3.1 Difficulties in Expeditious Reading Test…………………………... 58. 4.3.1 Difficulties in Different Proficiency Groups………………………. 62. 5. Conclusion………………………………………………………………….... 65. v.

(6) 5.1 Findings……………………………………………………………….…. 65. 5.1.1 Question 1: How do the Taiwanese senior high school students of different proficiency levels perform in the expeditious reading and the careful reading test?.................................................................... 65. 5.1.2 Question 2: How do the students perform in skimming, search reading, and scanning?.......................................................... 66. 5.1.3 Question 3: What reading strategies are employed by the students when they conduct expeditious reading?........................................... 政治大 while conducting expeditious reading?............................................ 立. 68. 5.1.4 Question 4: What are the difficulties the students experience. 5.2 Implications………………………………………………………………. 學. ‧ 國. 69 70 70. 5.2.2 Testing Implications………………………………………………... 71. 5.3 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research……………………….. 73. ‧. 5.2.1 Pedagogical Implications…………………………………………... sit. y. Nat. io. er. 5.3.1 Expeditious Reading Performance………………………………… 5.3.2 Strategy Use and Difficulties in Expeditious Reading……………... n. al. Ch. n U engchi. iv. References……………………………………………………………………… Appendices. 74 75 76. A. Careful Reading Test………………………………………………………... 86. B. Expeditious Reading Test………………………………………………….... 91. C. Expeditious Reading Mock Test…………………………………………….. 99. D. Expeditious Reading Questionnaire……………………………………….... 102. E. Categories and Sources of Reading Strategy Items…………………………. 104. F. Sources of Reading Difficulty Items………………………………………... 106. G. Quotations of the Participants’ Questionnaire Responses…………………... 107. vi.

(7) 國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士班碩士論文提要論文名稱：台灣高中英文快速閱讀測驗研究指導教授：尤雪瑛博士研究生：張捷. 論文提要內容：以英文為外語的學習者常仰賴閱讀獲取英文相關的知識跟文化，所以閱讀在. 政治大半只專注在仔細閱讀的教導上立，而忽略了包含略讀、搜索閱讀跟掃讀的快速閱讀，台灣的英文課中得到相當程度地的重視，即便如此，台灣的高中英文閱讀教學多. ‧ 國. 學. 這是因為快速閱讀並沒有納入在大學入學考試的測驗當中。考量到快速閱讀是日常生活跟學習上不可或缺的技能，本研究旨在檢驗台灣高中學生的英文快速閱讀. ‧. 能力，他們在進行快速閱讀中所採用的閱讀策略跟遇到的閱讀困難也是本研究的. sit. y. Nat. 調查目標。研究者設計了一份快速閱讀測驗跟一份仔細閱讀測驗來比較學生們的. al. er. io. 閱讀能力。此外，研究者設計了一份問卷來調查學生們在快速閱讀測驗當中所運. n. 用的閱讀策略跟遭遇的閱讀困難。. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. 研究結果顯示台灣高中學生在快速閱讀測驗上的表現略優於他們在仔細閱讀測驗上的表現。此外，學生們在掃讀上表現得最好，優於在搜索閱讀上的表現，而略讀上的表現則是最差。關於策略的使用，學生們雖然會運用快速閱讀策略來完成快速閱讀的任務，但他們仍然在快速閱讀測驗當中普遍地使用仔細閱讀的策略。至於閱讀的困難，學生們進行快速閱讀時的困難主要來自於文章的用字、主題熟悉度跟長度。根據研究的發現，本研究對於教導與評量台灣高中學生的快速閱讀能力提出了實務上的建議。. 關鍵字：測驗、快速閱讀、仔細閱讀、閱讀策略、閱讀困難. vii.

(8) Abstract As a crucial language skill for EFL learns to gain English knowledge and culture (Alsamadani, 2009), reading receives considerable pedagogical attention in English classes in Taiwan (Wu, 2010). However, the reading instruction at the senior high school level focuses on the careful reading (Hsu, 2004). The expeditious reading, including skimming, search reading, and scanning (Urquhart & Weir, 1998), is often neglected. Considering the usefulness of expeditious reading in daily and academic life (Brown, 2007), the present research examined the expeditious reading ability of. 政治大 experienced in conducting expeditious reading. The researcher composed an 立. Taiwanese senior high school students, their strategy use and difficulties they had. expeditious reading test and a careful reading test to compare the students’ reading. ‧ 國. 學. performances. Besides, the researcher designed a questionnaire to survey the strategy. ‧. use and difficulties experienced by the students in the expeditious reading test.. sit. y. Nat. The result showed that the Taiwanese senior high school students’ performance. io. er. on the expeditious reading test was marginally higher than their performance on the careful reading test. In addition, the student’s scanning score was the highest,. al. n. v i n followed by the search reading, C and the skimming wasU h e n g c h i the lowest. As for strategy use, the students applied expeditious reading strategies to approach expeditious reading. tasks in the test, but they also appealed to some careful reading strategies in the expeditious reading test. Concerning difficulties, the students faced more problems with the vocabulary, topics, and length of texts when conducting expeditious reading. The findings yielded practical implications for teaching and assessing the expeditious reading at the senior high school level in Taiwan.. Keywords: testing, expeditious reading, careful reading, reading strategy, reading difficulty viii.

(9) CHAPTER I Introduction This chapter first introduces the current study’s research background and motivation. Then it states the research purposes and proposes the research questions addressed in the current study. Last, the significance of the study or the fields that the findings of the current study may contribute to is suggested. Background and Motivation Reading is considered the most important language skill in an EFL context. 政治大 (Alsamadani, 2009). EFL teachers commonly teach English with English textbooks, 立. through which L2 learners get the access to English knowledge and culture. magazines, or news. From the content of these written materials, EFL students gain. ‧ 國. 學. knowledge about American or British cultures. Therefore, reading receives the most. ‧. attention and time in EFL English classes, compared with listening, speaking, and. sit. y. Nat. writing, (Wu, 2010).. io. er. The EFL reading instruction puts much focus on developing learners’ linguistic abilities, including the abilities of decoding lexis and parsing syntactic structures. al. n. v i n Ch (Alderson & Bachman, 2000). In most cases, students are taught to memorize engchi U. meanings of words and analyze sentence patterns. It is fearful that EFL leaners are seldom instructed to practice reading strategies, which are believed to facilitate the completion of reading tasks (Chiu, 1998; Lee, 2003). Some researchers assume that students can employ the strategies they use in L1 reading to address an L2 reading task. However, other researchers found that the transfer of strategic knowledge between L1 and L2 is unlikely to happen automatically without training (Chang, 2005). Besides, there is a linguistic threshold theory saying that learners’ language proficiency must reach a certain level before they are able to transfer their L1 reading ability to L2 reading (Alderson & Bachman, 2000). Thus EFL learners indeed need to 1.

(10) receive the instruction of reading strategies in their L2 use. Even if EFL learners are instructed to practice reading strategies, the types are often restricted to careful reading strategies, such as to guess unknown words from the context, to analyze sentence structures, to get the relationships between main ideas and supporting details, or to recognize the author’s hidden attitudes (Urquhart & Weir, 1998). These careful reading strategies are used when readers want to reach a comprehensive understanding of a text. Their manner of text processing is primary intensive reading. Readers sample each word and may go back and forth to ensure. 政治大 However, there are times when readers do not need to know everything within a text. 立. they understand all the ideas and details in the text (Hoover & Tunmer, 1993).. For instance, in browsing through newspapers or magazines, they only want to find. ‧ 國. 學. out what an article is about or some messages relevant to their interests. The strategies. sit. y. Nat. called expeditious reading strategies (Weir et al., 2000).. ‧. related to this kind of purpose to quickly extract certain information from a text are. io. er. Expeditious reading strategies include skimming, search reading, and scanning (Anderson, 2006). According to Hughes (2003) and Weir et al. (2006), the purpose of. al. n. v i n Cofha text. To meet theUpurpose, readers may use skimming is to quickly grasp the gist engchi skills like reading titles and subtitles, introductory and/or concluding paragraphs, or. the topic sentence of each body paragraph. Search reading aims at finding information about text structure, such as cause-effect or problem-solution. Readers may keep eyes on synonymous words of the key words and read carefully once the relevant parts are located. Scanning is adopted to look for specific words or numbers. Readers bear the target information or questions in mind, and match it with the words in a text. These three expeditious reading strategies are essential for English users in academic, vocational, and general contexts (Brown, 2007). Students skim to preview, review, or summarize learning materials. Employees scan to check schedule or data in a table. 2.

(11) People perform search reading to find information on a current issue (Nuttall, 198; Weir, 1993). Regardless of the usefulness, expeditious reading strategies are often neglected in reading classes. Thus students were found to have difficulty employing them (Weir et al., 2000). The reason for the negligence of expeditious reading is the partiality of language testing (Urquhart & Weir, 1998). Most reading tests at all proficiency levels only assess test takers’ careful reading competence in their reading comprehension sections. The competence to employ expeditious reading strategies is often left unmeasured.. 政治大 2000), learners suffer from the negative washback of lacking the training of 立. Since teachers tend to ignore constructs not included in the test (Alderson & Bachman,. expeditious reading. Students do not know how to quickly extract the information of. ‧ 國. 學. their immediate interests. They may, thus, always conduct non-selective reading,. ‧. processing each word and irrelevant details carefully in a text, regardless of their. sit. y. Nat. reading purposes (Hughes, 2003; Spache & Berg, 1984). Ideally, students should be. io. er. equipped with various reading strategies, so they can select an appropriate one for a particular reading purpose.. al. n. v i n C h two college entrance In the EFL context of Taiwan, examinations, General engchi U. Scholastic Ability Test (GSAT) and Advanced Subjects Test (AST), also only measure senior high school students’ careful reading competence. Because these two tests are high-stake achievement tests, it is not surprising that they affect the English teaching and learning in senior high schools. As a result, Taiwan’s reading instruction at senior high school level focuses primarily on careful reading strategies. Students spare much time and effort on memorizing vocabulary and analyzing sentence patterns, hoping that the completing understanding of texts can lead to higher test scores in the college entrance exams (Hsu, 2004). Not much time is left for practicing expeditious reading strategies. However, as expeditious reading is a common skill in daily and academic 3.

(12) reading, it is worthwhile to explore if Taiwanese senior high school students possess the competence to employ expeditious reading despite the lack of training. Besides, most research on expeditious reading is carried out in ESL context or at the tertiary level (Urquhart & Weir, 1998). Little investigation has been done to explore the competence of EFL learners at the senior high school level. The present study is to attract the attention from from both researchers and educators. Research Purposes and Research Questions The primary purpose of the study is to examine Taiwanese high school students’. 政治大 perform expeditious reading in comparison with careful reading. Moreover, from the 立. expeditious reading competence. The researcher aims especially at how well they can. expeditious reading performance, the current study intends to find out the students’. ‧ 國. 學. competence in employing skimming, search reading, and scanning, because these. sit. y. Nat. reading process, and reading scope (see chapter 2).. ‧. three constructs of expeditious reading differ greatly in their purposes, operations,. io. er. In addition to expeditious reading competence, the present research would also study how the students would approach expeditious reading, or what strategies they. al. n. v i n would use during the process if theyCare required to skim,U h e n g c h i search read, or scan. It is. worthwhile to investigate if the students would perform expeditious reading tasks in the ways different from those for careful reading. Furthermore, the study would analyze what strategies are more frequently adopted and what are less or seldom adopted. Last, since the students are not familiar with the expeditious reading, the current study intends to discover what the difficulties they may experience while carrying out expeditious reading tasks. In particular, the research would identify problems the subjects face when they read texts of loner length and are required to process texts at a faster speed. 4.

(13) In conclusion of the above purposes, the present research aims to investigate Taiwanese senior high school student’s competence, strategy use, and difficulties of expeditious reading. It is the purpose of the study to find out if competence, strategy use, and difficulties will vary among students of different proficiency levels. In order to achieve the purposes of the current study, the following four research questions are proposed: 1. How do the Taiwanese senior high school students of different proficiency level perform in the expeditious reading and the careful reading test?. 政治大 What reading strategies are employed by the students when they conduct 立. 2. How do the students perform in skimming, search reading, and scanning? 3.. expeditious reading?. ‧ 國. 學. 4. What are the difficulties the students experience while conducting expeditious. sit. y. Nat. Significance of the Study. ‧. reading?. io. er. The present research offers the first-hand information about the expeditious reading competence, strategy use, and difficulties of EFL learners at the senior high. al. n. v i n school level in Taiwan. The C study can be used as groundwork for further replication hengchi U. research in similar contexts to confirm the findings. Besides, the findings may be used by researchers who wish to compare the expeditious reading competence, strategy use, or difficulties of students in different language learning environments or at different education levels. In addition, the results of the current study can prepare senior high school English teachers for teaching expeditious reading in their reading classes. The test results indicate the students’ current expeditious reading competence which is useful information for the teachers to help their students. The survey of strategy use shows the expeditious reading strategies the students may already know or are not familiar 5.

(14) with, which can help teachers decide what strategies worth more instruction or practice. The survey of reading difficulties offers insights into the problems the students need to overcome while conducting expeditious reading. These findings as a whole may arouse senior high school English teachers’ awareness and offer better understanding of expeditious reading. Finally, the procedure of constructing expeditious reading test reported in the study offers detailed specifications about the constructs, items, texts, readability, and processing speed of the expeditious reading test. The procedure can be reference for. 政治大 senior high school level. Additionally, the specifications offer details information 立. test designers who desire to construct expeditious reading tests for EFL learners at the. about the constructs or subskills involved in expeditious reading.. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 6. i n U. v.

(15) CHAPTER 2 Literature Review This chapter reviews three aspects of literature relevant to the current study: reading, expeditious reading, and testing of expeditious reading. The first section introduces the nature of reading, reading in EFL context, and reading strategies. The second section focuses on the constructs and the use of expeditious reading. The third section centers on four standardized tests that include the expeditious reading assessment. Their format, strengths, and weaknesses of measuring expeditious reading. 政治大 testing is proposed, so is the need to investigate EFL senior high school learners’ 立 competence are discussed. Last, the fact that expeditious reading is neglected in. Reading. 學. ‧ 國. expeditious reading competence.. ‧. In this section, an introduction is first given to the nature of reading. Then the. sit. y. Nat. importance of reading in EFL context is heighted, so is its problem of EFL reading. io. The Nature of Reading. er. instruction. Last, reading strategies as the remedy is proposed and discussed.. al. n. v i n Reading is a cognitive C process of comprehending h e n g c h i U language in written form,. which involves the interaction between a reader and the text (Grabe, 1991; Urquhart & Weir, 1998). During the process, readers relate the messages decoded from written language to the background information stored in their mind (Bernhardt, 1991; Dole et al., 1991). The information ranges from the sound of letters, the meaning of words, and the structure of sentences, to the background knowledge about the structure and the topic of a text (Segalowitz, Poulsen, & Komoda, 1991). With emphasis on different levels of information, the processing of reading comprehension can be categorized into three approaches: bottom-up approach, top-down approach, and interactive approach. 7.

(16) In the bottom-up approach, readers begin with printed texts. Their primary tasks are decoding words and parsing sentences. Decoding is also called word recognition. It includes a serial process of identifying letters and sounds of words, and retrieving their meanings from the metal lexicon (Perfetti, 1985). Parsing is a cognitive action that readers break down a sentence into grammatical parts like the subject and the predicate (Gough, 1972). Identification of these grammatical parts helps to understand the meaning of a sentence. Relying mainly on words and sentences presented in the text, readers focus more on linguistic forms in the bottom-up approach (Alderson &. 政治大 In contrast, the top-down approach stresses on non-visual information 立. Bachman, 2000).. contributed from readers’ brain over the printed text (Smith, 1971). Readers begin. ‧ 國. 學. with predicting the meaning of a text based on their background knowledge about its. ‧. topic and the knowledge about the rhetoric structure of that text type (Goodman,. sit. y. Nat. 1982). The former kind of the knowledge is known as content schema and the latter. io. er. one as formal schema (Brown, 2007; Carrell & Eisterhold, 1988). When the predictions made from these two schemata are wrong or useless, readers often resort. al. n. v i n C h Activating schemata to bottom-up processing (Schank, 1978). to foster engchi U. comprehension, readers play a more active role in the top-down approach (Adams & Collins, 1979; Cooper & Petrosky, 1976). The interactive approach proposes that reading processing is not composed of serial steps (either bottom-up or top-down) but parallel (Barr et al., 1990; Grabe 1991). Readers analyze the text and predict meanings simultaneously. As they read on, their hypotheses are continuously confirmed or modified based on the new incoming messages from the decoded text and readers’ schemata (Goodman, 1982; Nunan, 1999). In addition, these components of information source compensate for each other’s deficits (Stanovich, 1980). For instance, a reader with poor word recognition 8.

(17) ability will utilize the background knowledge about the topic to comprehend a text. Encompassing the bottom-up and top-down approaches, the interactive approach is widely considered the most comprehensive framework of the reading process (Anderson, 1999). Reading in EFL Context In an EFL learning environment, reading is considered a very important language skill for second language (L2) acquisition and usually receives more pedagogical attention and time than speaking, listening, or writing does (Carrell et at., 1998; Day. 政治大 over the other skills is that reading is any easy and convenient access to English 立. & Bamford, 1998; Grabe, 1991; Wu, 2010). The reason why reading is emphasized. knowledge (Alsamadani, 2009; Anderson, 2006). Without native speakers around to. ‧ 國. 學. be engaged in communication, EFL leaners often learn English with written texts such. ‧. as textbooks, magazines, and webpages. It is through reading materials that they. sit. y. Nat. acquire inputs of English and its culture.. io. er. Although EFL learners spare much time and efforts on English reading, little progress of their reading ability had been observed (Zhang & Wu, 2009; Shang, 2008).. al. n. v i n C Lee According to Chiu (1998) and it was because EFL students received less h e(2003), ngchi U. instruction of reading strategies, which were found to foster reading comprehension or completing a reading task (Alderson, 1984). Most of the time, their attention was drawn to lexical meanings and syntactic structures. This resulted in the situation that EFL learners conducted reading as an activity of recalling vocabulary and analyzing grammatical rules (Spache & Berg, 1984). However, the improvement of linguistic ability is unlikely to enhance learners’ ability to use strategies (Alderson & Bachman, 2000). Previous research has shown that reading in a foreign language is a language. problem as well as a reading problem (Alderson, 1984). English teachers should not ignore the importance of strategy use in reading comprehension and assume that EFL 9.

(18) students would naturally transfer the strategies used with the first language (L1) to the second language (L2). Even though they were proficient readers in L1, EFL learners were found to seldom adopt the L1 strategies to read in L2 (Chang, 2005). It seems that the explicit instruction of reading strategies is strongly advocated in EFL reading classes (Chamot, 2005; Zhang & Wu, 2009). Reading Strategies A reading strategy is commonly defined as a deliberate action selected by readers to achieve a reading purpose (Carrell, 1998; Paris et al., 1991; Rowe & Rayford, 1987;. 政治大 problems in reading (William & Moran, 1989). The problems can be at various levels. 立 Van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). Strategies are conscious efforts with a purpose to solve. If readers have problems with comprehending words or sentences, they may use. ‧ 國. 學. strategies such as rereading or guessing meanings from context (Barnett, 1988). If the. ‧. problem is with structure, strategies like separating main ideas from supporting details,. sit. y. Nat. and analyzing text organization may be adopted (Carrell, 1989). If the problem is at. io. er. the content, readers may employ prediction strategy (Block, 1986).. Enright et al. (2000) outlined at least four common purposes of reading tasks:. al. n. v i n Ch read to search, read to get basic comprehension, read to learn, and read to integrate engchi U information of different texts. Different purposes engage quite different strategies. (Weir et al., 2006). For instance, scanning is employed in a task of reading to search for particular information while skimming is utilized to quickly get basic comprehension. That is why Cohen (1990) and Grabe (2004) contended that there are no good strategies, but only good selection of strategies. Readers are supposedly equipped with an array of strategies (Brown, 2007; Nunan, 1999). What distinguishes good readers from poor readers is if they can use strategies flexibly and appropriately (Hus, 2004; Spache & Berg, 1984). To be able to employ a strategy appropriate for a given purpose, readers need to 10.

(19) develop the metacognitive awareness, which was defined as the ability to understand and control one’s cognitive processes (Brown, 1987; Flavell 1979). The outcome of cognitive processes is said to be affected by three metacognitive variables. The first one is the personal variable (McNeil, 1987), which means readers’ awareness of what they intend to achieve with a text. The second variable is the task variable, which refers to the understanding of task demands, such as the available time or tools for a given reading task (Carrell, 1989). The last variable is the strategy variable. It is the knowledge about what strategy to use and how to use it (Flavell, 1987). For instance,. 政治大 and it can be achieved through reading the topic sentence of each paragraph. In a 立. skimming is a suitable strategy for grasping gist under the condition of limited time,. nutshell, metacognitive awareness explains how readers can select and employ a. ‧ 國. 學. particular reading strategy to accomplish a reading task (Wenden, 1998). This is why. io. er. Expeditious Reading. sit. y. Nat. strategies more effectively (Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001).. ‧. readers with higher degree of metacognitive awareness were found to use reading. Based on the difference of purposes, Urquhart and Weir (1998), Anderson. al. n. v i n C h two major U (2006), and Hughes (2003) established categories for reading strategies: engchi. careful reading strategies and expeditious reading strategies. The purpose of careful reading strategies is to have a complete understanding of a text, including both main ideas at the global level and details at the local level (Hoover & Tunmer, 1993; Weir et al., 2006). Urquhart and Weir (1998) described the manner of careful reading as “decoding all in order to comprehend all (p. 303).” Readers may read an entire article slowly to establish the relationship among details or between the main idea of a paragraph and its details. In addition, they may go back and forth between lines to make inference on the content or to figure out the author’s hidden ideology (Spache & Berg, 1984). 11.

(20) On the other hand, the purpose of expeditious reading strategies is to quickly extract certain information from a text (Hoover & Tunmer, 1993). Its name often gives people an illusion that they must read extremely fast to fulfill quickness. In fact, a reader’ processing speed does not increase greatly in a short time, but he or she can read faster by selective reading (Brown, 1975). The so-called speed readers do not read each word in a text. They skip irrelevant parts and process only what is related to their immediate interest (De Leeuw & de Leeuw, 1965; Miller, 1977; Rayner & Pollatsek, 1989). They may sample only the topic sentence of each paragraph to get. 政治大 still find all the desired information if s/he conducts careful reading and samples a 立. the gist of a passage or match the form of a jargon to find out its meaning. One can. passage completely, but selective reading saves much time and effort and thus is more. ‧ 國. 學. efficient (Spache & Berg, 1984). It is selectivity that distinguishes expeditious reading. sit. y. Nat. Constructs of Expeditious Reading. ‧. from careful reading (Urquhart & Weir, 1998).. io. er. According to Anderson (2006), expeditious reading is composed of three constructs: skimming, search reading, and scanning. The following parts will review. al. n. v i n Cand their respective purposes, operations, and the scope of reading. U h ethenprocessing i h gc. Skimming. Skimming is probably the most important and complicated construct. of expeditious reading, since a skimming task could involve three sub-constructs or goals to achieve. The first goal is to grasp the gist of a text (Hughes, 2003; Weir et al., 2006). The second one is to determine the relevance of a text to an established need (De Leeuw & de Leeuw, 1965; Weir, 1993). For example, based on your interest of studying Japan’s economy, you decide to keep an article addressing the same issue for later deeper reading. The third goal is to establish the macrostructure of a text (Spache & Berg, 1984; Urquhart & Weir, 1998). That is to know how the author organizes a passage or the main ideas of each paragraph. It should be reminded that there is a 12.

(21) significant difference between the way skimming and careful reading achieve the above three goals. In careful reading, readers get the gist or establish macrostructure on the basis of the majority of the information in a text, while in expeditious reading, readers achieve the same purposes with minimal information (Krishnan, 2011; Urquhart & Weir, 1998). In other words, most details are skipped in skimming. Only the parts that contain information about the main ideas of a passage will be processed (Brown, 1975; Casanave, 1986; Nation, 2005; Rayner & Pollatsek, 1989). While skimming for gist, relevance, and structure readers may perform various. 政治大 a list of operations, as in Table 1. The information collected from employing these 立. operations, such as reading titles and the abstract. Urquhart and Weir (1998) provided. operations then is integrated to construct the gist and the structure of a text (Palincsar. ‧ 國. 學. & Brown, 1984). Readers’ background knowledge about the topic and rhetoric. ‧. structure of the text can foster accomplishing the skimming task (Dole et al., 1991;. sit. y. Nat. Nation, 2005; Winograd, 1984;). It should be reminded that proficient readers are. io. er. flexible with using these operations and choose different ones for different text type (Urquhart & Weir, 1998). Thus, Brown (1970) recommended learners be instructed to. al. n. v i n Cgenres employ skimming on various their ability to select suitable skills for U h e nto gdevelop i h c a particular text type. Table 1 Operations of Skimming Operations 1. Read the titles and subtitles. 2. Read the abstract. 3. Read the introductory and concluding paragraph. 4. Read the first and last sentence of each paragraph. 5. Glance at words or phrases. Concerning the reading process of skimming, Weir et al. (2000) suggested that. 13.

(22) skimming is an interactive process that includes both the bottom-up and top-down approaches. When decoding the parts like topic sentences, readers simultaneously activating their schemata and form suppositions about the text gist and structure. As for the reading scope, skimming could be at either the global or the local level (Urquhart & Weir, 1998). The reading is at the global level when readers integrate information across several sentences or paragraphs to construct the text gist or structure. The reading is at the local level when the gist can be found in a single title or topic sentence.. 政治大 through the analysis of text structure (Urquhart & Weir, 1998). The target information 立 Search Reading. The purpose of search reading is to find the target information. of search reading can be of a wide range of structure components, such as the. ‧ 國. 學. definition of a phenomenon, the effect of an action, or the sequence of an event. ‧. (Spache & Berg, 1984). The precise language form of the target in search reading is. y. Nat. not fixed. For instance, the targeted “effect” of an action may be presented as the. er. io. sit. “result” or the “consequence” in a text. Readers need be aware of various possible synonyms of the target (Van Dijk, 1977). The more synonymous words or phrases. al. n. v i n Cthey they know about the target, the easier find the desired information. Therefore, h ewill ngchi U the vocabulary size of a reader and the paraphrase degree of a target directly influence the difficulty of a search reading task (Cheng & Good, 2009; Spache & Berg, 1984). To attain the goal of search reading, as explained above, readers’ primary operation is first to locate key words in the same or related semantic field (synonyms). Then readers will carefully read the located parts and the surrounding sentences to check if they contain the desired information (Urquhart & Weir, 1998; Weir et al., 2000). In addition to these two main operations, readers may read the topic sentences to decide if a paragraph contains the relevant information. If it does, readers then employ the two operations. Readers’ formal knowledge about the text structure can 14.

(23) accelerate the searching process (De Leeuw & de Leeuw, 1965). The three operations of search reading are listed below in Table 2. Table 2 Operations of Search Reading Operations 1. Keep alert for words in the same or relevant semantic field. 2. Read one or two sentences once the relevant parts are located. 3. Use formal knowledge as reading the first sentence of a paragraph to decide if it contains the desired information. Regarding the read process of searching, it is conformed to the interactive. 政治大. approach (Urquhart & Weir, 1998). Readers may activate their formal schema,. 立. sampling the introduction or topic sentences to locate the parts that contain the desired. ‧ 國. 學. information. Then they recognize synonymous words or phrases of the target and decode the relevant sentences. As for the scope of reading, search reading can be. ‧. either global or local (Weir et al., 2006). If the target is stated in a single sentence, the. Nat. sit. y. reading is at the local level. If the desired information is scattered in a text or runs. n. al. er. io. across sentences, the reading would then be at the global level.. i n U. v. Scanning. The purpose of scanning is to find specific symbols (Khalifa & Weir,. Ch. engchi. 2009; Miller, 1977). Unlike search reading in which readers are not certain about the precise form of the target, scanning aims at definite targets such as proper names, dates, or figures (Urquhart & Weir, 1998). Since the target of scanning is precise, readers only need to focus on the target and can skip any part that does not contain the target (Weir et al., 2007). That is why Weir et al. (2000) considered scanning the most selective construct in the expeditious reading. To achieve the goal of scanning, readers mainly rely on the skill of matching words or numbers. They bear the target in mind, and search for it while quickly going through a text (Rosenshine, 1980). To accelerate the scanning process, readers may. 15.

(24) utilize the formal schema, reading subtitles or headlines to narrow down the scope of searching in a long text (Brown, 1975; Grant & Davey, 1991). The two operations of scanning are listed in the following Table 3. Table 3 Operations of Scanning Operations 1. Bear the target in mind and match the symbol in the text. 2. Use formal knowledge as reading headings to narrow down the searching scope. Concerning the reading process of scanning, Urquhart and Weir (1998) pointed. 政治大. out that scanning is mainly a bottom-up process. Readers’ focus is primary on. 立. matching and recognizing individual words or numbers. Occasionally, scanning. ‧ 國. 學. begins with the top-down approach when readers activate the formal schema and. ‧. sample the subtitles first to select areas for matching (Spache & Berg, 1984). As for the scope of reading, scanning is at the local level since the target is precise and do. y. Nat. io. n. al. er. The Use of Expeditions Reading. sit. not span over a sentence (Weir et al, 2000).. Ch. i n U. v. With purposes to quickly extract the desired information from the text,. engchi. expeditious reading strategies—skimming, search reading, and scanning—are valuable reading strategies in various contexts (Brown, 2007). According to Weir (1993) and Krishnan (2011), students of higher education expressed that they commonly used expeditious reading strategies to accomplish their assignments. For example, they skim a large volume of assigned readings to select the parts that are important and worth careful reading. The preview also prepares them for learning difficult materials in class (Grellet, 1981; Nuttall, 1985). Besides, skimming helps students establish text structure for writing a summary or an outline of an article (Urquhart & Weir, 1998). 16.

(25) In addition to academic context, expeditious reading strategies are essential in context of English for general purpose (EGP) and English for Specific Purpose (ESP). Briefly skimming an article or a report that has been read before helps people recall its content (Weir, 1993). Search reading aids with collecting information on the causes, impacts, and resolutions of a current issue or phenomenon (Urquhart & Weir, 1998). Scanning could also be used to find any specific piece of information, such as the page number of an article in a book and the name of a show in a brochure (Weir, 1993).. 政治大 Although expeditious reading is useful in the EAP context, Weir et al. (2000) 立. The Negligence of Expeditious Reading in Pedagogy. reported that many L1 and L2 learners are not familiar with the skills and find it. ‧ 國. 學. difficult. In fact, expeditious reading was barely taught in reading classes (Weir et al.,. ‧. 2006). Most time in reading classes was paid to practice careful reading.. sit. y. Nat. The fact that expeditious reading was ignored in pedagogy could be explained. io. er. with two reasons. First of all, English teachers or textbook publishers preferred to use short texts which are suitable for conducting careful reading, because they want to. al. n. v i n Clessons finish each text in one or two 1996). The second and the most U h e n(Nuttall, i h gc fundamental reason is the partiality of reading assessment. Most reading. comprehension tests at the secondary or higher education level only measure learners’ careful reading competence (Urquhart & Weir, 1998). As the consequence of the backwash effect, learners’ attention is drawn to comprehend each word and sentence in a text. The reading instruction focuses mainly on teaching vocabulary and analyzing sentence structures (Hsu, 2004). Even textbooks for reading classes are designed with a major goal to develop and exercise learner’s careful reading skills (Wei, 2012).. 17.

(26) Testing of Expeditious Reading Though often ignored in the field of teaching and testing, the expeditious reading competence is assessed in some standardized tests, such as International English Language Testing System (IELTS), College English Test (CET), Test for English Majors (TEM), and The General English Proficiency Test (GEPT). The following sections review their designs, strengths, and weaknesses of the expeditious reading assessment. IELTS is a test for an English speaking context. CET and TEM are from the EFL context in Mainland China. GEPT is from the EFL context in Taiwan.. 政治大. The Expeditious Reading Test in the International English Language Testing System (IELTS)—Academic Module. 立. IELTS is an internationally acknowledged standardized test that primarily targets. ‧ 國. 學. at assessing the English proficiency of foreigners who wish to study in, work in, or. ‧. immigrant to English speaking countries. IELTS has two modules: general training. sit. y. Nat. and academic. The academic module measures the English proficiency needed for. io. reading and the expeditious reading competence. al. er. higher education context. Its reading section encloses the assessment of the careful. n. v i n C hto finish the reading IELTS test takers have 60 minutes test that contains three engchi U. passages. Each passage is around 1000 words long. There are 40 test items in a test. The item types vary from passage to passage. IELTS proposes a total of 11 item types. Different item types aim at different abilities. For instance, “summary completion” assesses the careful reading ability to understand main ideas and details of a text. “Matching feature” assesses the skimming and scanning ability to find the information quickly. The first strength of IELTS is its authenticity. Its item types are analogous to expeditious reading tasks readers perform in real life (Weir, 1993). For example, a short-answer question is similar to a search reading task in which readers try to find 18.

(27) the answer for a question they have on a topic. The benefit of this design brings about the positive backwash effect that learners are taught to practice the test in a way that prepares them for achieving genuine reading tasks (Weir, 1991). Moreover, the score generated from authentic reading tasks has a better external validity. The test performance could be generalized to readers’ real-life reading ability (Weir, 2006). The second strength of IELTS is its long texts. Each passage is over 1000 words. It was widely suggested that the texts used for testing expeditious reading should be much longer than those for careful reading so as to reflect the authentic situation. 政治大 Urquhart & Weir, 1988). Besides, longer texts propel readers to conduct selective 立 where learners need to employ expeditious reading (Alderson & Bachman, 2000;. reading, sampling only the relevant or important parts (Weir et al., 2000). Longer texts. ‧ 國. 學. also offer ideal contexts for readers to perform their skimming ability in. ‧. distinguishing main ideas from details and constructing the macrostructure of an. sit. y. Nat. article (Nuttall, 1996).. io. er. The weakness of IELTS is that it does not set a separate section for expeditious reading. It integrates the assessment of expeditious reading and careful reading. al. n. v i n C h speed of careful (Grellet, 1981). Since the processing reading is slow, IELTS gives its engchi U test-takers much time to finish the test. As a result, Weir (1993) found that test-takers simply read the texts in IELTS carefully and intensively for all item types. It is recommended that the assessment of expeditious reading be separated from careful reading so that a stricter time constraint can be imposed to propel learners to read at the required processing speed of expeditious reading (Krishnan, 2011; Weir et al., 2006). Another weakness in the integrative test design is the unbalanced weighting of expeditious reading and careful reading items. Krishnan (2011) reported that 77% of the test items in IELTS are constructed for careful reading skills. The ratio of 19.

(28) expeditious reading items is relatively small. It is questionable that if the expeditious reading competence is the major focus of IELTS as it proposes (Weir et al., 2000). The Expeditious Reading Test in the College English Test (CET)—Band 4 and Band 6 CET in Mainland China aims at measuring the English proficiency of Chinese college students. It has two levels of the proficiency test: band 4 and band 6. Band 4 is constructs based on the basic requirements of the college English curriculum, and band 6 is on the higher requirements. Ever since the reform in 2006, CET band 4 and band 6 have enclosed the expeditious reading assessment in the reading test.. 政治大 reading assessment. The section contains only one passage. The passage is 1000 立. The reading test of CET contains a fifteen-minute section for the expeditious. words long in band 4 and 1200 words long in band 6. The required processing speed. ‧ 國. 學. is 100 words per minute (wpm) in band 4 and 120 wpm in band 6. The passage is. y. Nat. questions (MCQ), and the last three are sentence completion.. ‧. followed by 10 comprehension items. The former seven items are multiple choice. er. io. sit. The strength of CET’s expeditious reading test is its passage selection. First of all, its difficulty level is lower than student’s current proficiency level. CET clearly states. al. n. v i n C h should not containUmore than 3% unknown in the test specifications that the passage engchi words and the readability should be higher (easier to read) than texts used in the. careful reading test. Nuttal (1985) and Weir et al. (2000) believed that easier texts enable readers to process faster without frequent stops to infer unknown words or parse complex sentences. Another advantage of the passages in CET is the clear discourse structure. The passages are informational or scientific articles. This type of text is often written with well-organized structures like problem-solution, cause-effect, or chronological order (De Leeuw & de Leeuw, 1965; Spache & Berg, 1984). In addition, the passages usually have headings to signal different sections, topic sentences to state the main of 20.

(29) each paragraph, or bullet points to list important messages. These rhetoric features can help readers quickly navigate through a long text, grasp the gist, and locate particular pieces of information (Nuttall, 1985; Weir, 1993; Weir et al., 2000). The weakness of CET’s one-passage design is the uneven weighting of constructs (Weir et al., 2000). A text often enclosed only one gist for skimming item, but there were many items for search reading and scanning. However, skimming should receive heavier weighting since it demands much effort like integrating and organizing information collected from various parts in a text (Palincsar & Brown,. 政治大 The Expeditious Reading Test in the Test for English Majors (TEM)—Band 4 and 立 1984; Stevens, 1988; Weir, 1993).. Band 8. ‧ 國. 學. The TEM in Mainland China is designed especially to assess the English. ‧. proficiency of Chinese college students whose major is English. It has two levels of. sit. y. Nat. the proficiency test: band 4 and band 8. Band 4 is constructed based on the basic. io. er. requirements in the college English curriculum for English majors, and band 8 is on the higher requirements. Before its reform in 2005, TEM band 4 and band 8 enclosed. al. n. v i n C h reading competence a section for assessing expeditious in the reading test. engchi U. TEM band 4 requires test-takers to finish an expeditious reading test with a total. of 900 words in five minutes. Band 8 gives ten minutes for an expeditious reading test with a total of 3000 words. Both band 4 and band 8 contain seven passages. The passages in band 4 are around 100 words, and those in band 8 are around 300 words. Each of the former four passages includes one multiple choice question for testing skimming, and each of the latter three passages involves two for testing search reading and scanning. There are a total of 10 multiple choice questions in a TEM’s expeditious reading test. The strength of TEM’s expeditious reading test is that the adopted passages 21.

(30) enclose a wide range of genres. Learners are expected to notice the distinctive conventions of various genres and develop strategies accordingly (Brown, 2007). For examples, genres like manuals, schedules, or diagrams are commonly associated with the expeditious reading (Miller, 1977; Spache & Berg, 1984). Learners are trained to practice extracting information from them frequently. Another advantage of the test is that the questions in the test are given before the texts. The sequence was commonly proposed because it would make the expeditious reading tasks more authentic (Alderson & Bachman, 2000; Weir et al., 2000). In daily. 政治大 “Does it talk about…?” before employing skimming, search reading, or scanning. 立. life, readers often start with a question in mind like “What is this article about?” or. Placed before texts, questions direct students to approach the texts with purposes in. ‧ 國. 學. mind (Heaton, 1988; Weir, 1993).. ‧. The weakness of TEM is that its texts are too short. Short texts were not. sit. y. Nat. recommended for expeditious reading assessment, because they were found to incur. io. er. intensive careful reading (Heaton, 1988). They do not propel readers to conduct selective reading. Besides, short texts in TEM contain only one or two paragraphs.. al. n. v i n The structure of the text is not overtC with the absence of an h e n g c h i Uintroduction, conclusion, or topic sentences of each body paragraph (Weir, 1993).. The Expeditious Reading Test in the The General English Proficiency Test (GEPT)—Advanced GEPT is a proficiency test that aims at Taiwanese English learners at all levels. It is often used as a reference for the English proficiency level of employees and students in Taiwan. GEPT has five levels of proficiency test: elementary, intermediate, high- intermediate, advanced, and superior. The advanced level is the only level that contains an expeditious reading test in the assessment of reading skill. The expeditious reading test of GEPT gives its test-takers 20 minutes to finish 22.

(31) six passages. The former four short texts are around 200 words. Each of them includes one to two multiple choice questions that assess the skimming or search reading ability. The Latter two long texts are around 800 words. One of them includes six items of matching subtitles that assess the ability to skim for structure. The other text includes eight items of matching paragraphs that assess the scanning ability. There are a total of 20 items in the test The strength of GEPT is that it separates items of skimming, search reading, and scanning. In other words, different expeditious reading constructs are assessed by. 政治大 performance on skimming will not affect their search reading or scanning 立. different passages. This design is to avoid item interdependence. Test-takers’. performance (Weir, 1993). Additionally, test-takers are made aware of different. ‧ 國. 學. expeditious reading tasks and will perform distinct skills or operations (Weir et al.,. ‧. 2000).. sit. y. Nat. Another merit of the GEPT test lies in its instructions. The instructions clearly. io. er. guide the test-takers to read the questions first and then inform the appropriate expeditious reading strategy to use in a text. Thus, they are presumably more likely to. al. n. v i n C hexpeditious reading approach a task with the desired manner (Weir et al., 2000). engchi U The weakness of GEPT is that a sub-construct of skimming, “to decide the. relevance of a text to an established need,” (Hughes, 2003, p. 138; Urquhart & Weir, 1998, p. 301) is omitted. The expeditious reading tests of IELTS, CET, and TEM do not include items to assess this skimming construct either. Hence, results of these tests do not provide information about learners’ ability in this part. It is thus a sub-construct the present study will assess in the expeditious reading test. The Negligence of Expeditious Reading in Testing The above four standardized tests are the rare minority in the field of testing where expeditious reading is overlooked (Hughes, 2003; Urquhart and Weir, 1998). 23.

(32) Since the constructs of skimming, search reading, and scanning are omitted, results of reading tests fail to adequately delineate learners’ reading ability (Spolsky, 1995; Weir, 1993). In addition, inadequate constructs may lead to the negative washback that teachers ignore the instruction and training of important reading skills not included in the test (Alderson & Bachman, 2000; Hsu, 2004; Hughes, 2003; Weir et al, 2000). Thus it is afraid that students do not possess the ability to quickly extract the desired information from a text. Moreover, students may become inefficient readers who always conduct non-selective reading in regardless of reading purposes (Spache. 政治大 The two college entrance examinations in Taiwan, GSAT and AST, do not 立. & Berg, 1984).. address expeditious reading assessment either. This can incur the backwash effect that. ‧ 國. 學. Taiwanese senior high school students are seldom instructed to employ expeditious. ‧. reading strategies to quickly grasp the gist and structure or quickly locate a. sit. y. Nat. predetermined target in a text. The present study attempts to investigate if Taiwanese. io. er. senior high school students are able to perform expeditious reading with limited instruction, what strategies they use, and what difficulties they have while conduct. n. al. expeditious reading.. Ch. engchi. 24. i n U. v.

(33) CHAPTER 3 Methodology This chapter contains three sections. The first section gives explanation on the selection and grouping of the participants. The second introduces the types of the instruments used to find out the participants’ expeditious reading competence, strategy use, and difficulties. The principles of constructing an expeditious reading test at EFL senior high school level are also proposed in this section. The last section describes the procedures of data collection and data analysis. Participants 政治大 The participants of the present study were 54 Taiwanese students from two 立. senior classes in a senior high school in Taipei. The school ranked intermediate level. ‧ 國. 學. among Taipei’s senior high schools. Its classes were formed by students with English. ‧. proficiency levels of a normal distribution. Thus the selected participants can. sit. y. Nat. represent the current research’s target population: Taiwanese senior high school. io. er. students in general.. The 54 participants were categorized into the high, mid, and low proficiency. al. n. v i n groups based on their scoresC in GSAT , the standardized h e n g c h i U test that all seniors had taken 1. to measure their English proficiency. As the result of the grouping procedure, there were 19 students in the high proficiency group, 23 in mid, and 12 in the low. proficiency group. Although the number of participants in each group was not identical, three groups were still statistically comparable because the result of homogeneity of variance test was insignificant (.066), which meant that the numbers of members in the three groups were statistically homogenous. The purpose of grouping was to investigate if expeditious reading competence, strategy use, or 1. Students with the scaled score of or above band 13 belong to the high proficiency group. The students with the score of or below band 9 are the low proficiency group. Those with the score between band 12 and band 10 are mid proficiency group. 25.

(34) difficulties varied among students of different proficiency levels. Instruments There were four instruments in the current study. The first two were two test papers designed independently for careful reading and expeditious reading. They were used to compare the participants’ careful reading and expeditious reading performance. The third was an expeditious reading mock test, used as a practice before the formal expeditious reading test. The last one was a questionnaire to investigate the participants’ strategy use and difficulties in the expeditious reading test. Careful Reading Test. 立. 政治大. The present study used the College Entrance Examination Center’s (CEEC). ‧ 國. 學. published tests to measure the participants’ careful reading competence, because. ‧. CEEC has been testing careful reading in the section of Reading Comprehension for. sit. y. Nat. decades and has developed complete and solid specifications and test items. Despite. io. er. the fact that CEEC administers two levels of college entrance examinations (the basic GSAT and the advanced AST), all the texts and items of the careful reading test in the. al. n. v i n C The present study were at the GSAT level. of this design was to evaluate the h epurpose ngchi U. basic reading ability generally required for senior high school students in Taiwan.. To avoid the possibility that the participants had practiced the tests before, only the texts and items issued before 2007 were selected to the current study. Then the chosen texts and items were submitted to two experts for judgment. Both of them agreed that the chosen texts and items are appropriate for assessing Taiwanese senior high school students’ careful reading ability. The following five sections respectively specify the constructs, test items, reading texts, text readability, and test processing in the careful reading test of the current study. The finalized careful reading test is presented in APPRENDIX A. 26.

(35) Constructs. The items selected to test careful reading competence encompassed six constructs GSAT specifies for careful reading comprehension: (1) to get the main idea of a text, (2) to identify the purpose or the intention of a text, (3) to comprehend the relationship between a main idea and its details, (4) to get the relationships among details, (5) to make proper inference or judgment, and (6) to guess the meaning of unknown words from the context. The weighting of each construct in the careful reading test of the current study was similar to that of GSAT2. The construct of “get the main idea of a text” received. 政治大 gets 6.7%. Concerning two constructs related to details, both “establish the 立. 20% of the total test items, while “to identify the purpose or the intention of a text”. relationship between the main idea of a paragraph and its details” and “get the. ‧ 國. 學. relationships among details” comprised 26.7% of the total items. As for the last two. ‧. constructs, “make proper inference or judgment” was allocated with 13.2% of the. sit. y. Nat. total items, and “guess the meaning of unknown words from the context” with 6.7%.. io. er. Items. To elicit evidence of careful reading comprehension, GSAT as well as the present careful reading test adopted the multiple choice questions (MCQ) as the item. al. n. v i n Ctohchoose a correct option type, in which test takers had among three other distractors engchi U to answer the question. MCQ is widely adopted in large scale high-stake tests for its advantage of objective and fast scoring. The number of items in the careful reading test of the present research was the same as the number in the reading comprehension section of college entrance examinations. The number of items in GSAT and AST was around 15 (from 2002 to 2004) to 16 (after 2004). Three to four items, along with a passage, formed a question set. Each question set in the careful reading test of the present research had three to. 2. According to the test analysis of GSAT, constructs related to comprehending details received the heaviest weighting, followed by constructs relevant to grasping text gist and making inference. 27.

(36) four questions, and the total item number was 15, the amount that the subjects were familiar with. The ratio of the four difficulty levels for test items in the careful reading test was consistent with the ideal ratio adopted by AST—10% for easy items, 40% for easy to intermediate, 40% for intermediate to difficult, and 10% for difficult items (Yin, 2005). Unlike the ideal ratio of GSAT3, the ratio of AST includes difficult items and is intended to discriminate different proficiency levels. It helped the present study investigated the differences of expeditious reading performance by different. 政治大 test was easy 7%, intermediate to easy 53%, intermediate to hard 33%, and hard 7% . 立 proficiency groups. The finalized ratio of four difficulty levels in our careful reading. 4. The ratio was close to the ideal ratio proposed for AST.. ‧ 國. 學. Reading Texts. There were four passages in the careful reading test of the present. ‧. study. The number was identical to that in college entrance examinations. The amount. sit. y. Nat. was suitable for the test takers since they were used to reading four passages at a time. io. er. in class practice activities.. The source of the texts was the reading comprehension section of CEEC’s. al. n. v i n C hpassage was from U college entrance examination. The first 2006 AST, the second and engchi. the third from 2003 GSAT, and the fourth from 2005 GSAT. Even though the first passage was taken from AST, its text characteristics (length, readability, and. vocabulary range) conformed to the level of the texts in GSAT. Additionally, these four passages were chosen from the college entrance examinations before 2007. That was more than five years from now, so the students were less likely to have read any. 3. The ideal ratio of four difficult levels in GSAT was 30% for easy items, 40% for easy to intermediate, 30% for intermediate to difficult, and 0% for difficult items (Yin, 2005). 4 Among the 15 items in the careful reading test of the present research, there was one item (No. 4) at the easy difficulty level, seven items (No. 1, No.2, No. 5, No. 6, No. 8, No. 12, and No. 13) at the intermediate to easy level, six items (No. 3, No. 7, No. 10, No. 11, No. 14, and No. 15) at the intermediate to hard level, and one item (No. 9) at the level of hard. 28.

(37) of them before taking the careful reading test. The four passages covered different topics. The first passage explained the packing culture of Japan. The second one introduced the history of magic. The third passage was about the power of fashion on youth, and the last one described red fire ants. From culture, history, life to nature, none of them overlapped with each other. This was to echo GSAT’s call that tests should encourage students to read extensively on a wide range of topics in their daily life. By the same token, GSAT emphasizes the variety of text styles. The selected text. 政治大 in reading comprehension. It should be noted that some texts incorporated more than 立. styles included exposition and description, the most common and frequent text styles. one text style, such as providing additional explanation as exposition while describing. ‧ 國. 學. a thing. Nevertheless, the text style was the type that could define the major part of a. ‧. text.. sit. y. Nat. The length of texts used in the careful reading test of the present research. io. er. conformed to the standard specified in GSAT, in which students should be able to read and comprehend texts with a length of 150 to 250 words. The length of the first. al. n. v i n passage was 227 words, the C second passage was 222 h e n g c h i U words long, the third one 225 words, and the fourth one had 247 words. The average text length was 230 words,. which fell perfectly in the range of 150 to 250 words. Text Readability. The first indicator of readability was the grade that suggested the difficulty level of the length and complexity of the sentences in a text. The current study set the readability of careful reading texts at Grade 9, the same as the average readability of all GSAT texts issued in recent five year. In the present careful reading test, the readability of the first passage was Grade 9.9, the second Grade 7.9, the third Grade 10.3, and the fourth one Grade 8.9. The average was Grade 9.25, nearly identical to that in the GSAT. Therefore, the participants will not find sentences too 29.