（英语语言文学专业论文）大学生英语阅读策略使用的实证研究.pdf

abstract in chinese i abstract in chinese 自二十世纪七十年代以来，第二语言研究的重点由如何教转向如何学，并且该研究 也涉及到学习者个体差异这一领域。研究者也越来越重视对学习过程的研究，因此在第 二语言习得的学习策略研究中掀起一股热潮。 关于阅读策略的研究也是这一领域的重要 部分。总的说来，阅读策略的研究可以分为两大类：一是研究阅读策略使用，它包括成 功阅读者与不成功阅读者使用策略的研究以及揭示阅读策略使用与阅读成绩的关系； 其 次是研究阅读策略的培训。国内外的研究者对阅读策略的使用情况做了大量的调查研 究。但是，国外的研究多于国内的研究，且多局限于二语习得环境，在中国环境里进行 的研究较少。 国内学者虽然关注中国学生阅读策略使用情况的个体差异和阅读策略培训 及其结果检测，但这些研究要么单纯针对英语专业学生，要么仅针对非英语专业学生。 其中， 同时关注中国环境中的英语专业学生与非英语专业学生阅读策略使用的对比研究 相对较少，并且在有限的外语学习研究中，大都停留在理论研究，缺乏实证检验。 因此，本研究试图采取定量的方法探讨英语专业学生与非英语专业学生在阅读策 略使用的异同，以及成功的阅读者与非成功阅读者使用阅读策略的特点。本研究对 200 名来自湘潭大学和湖南科技大学的英语专业学生和非英语专业学生进行了问卷调查。 调 查所得数据资料采用 spss12.0 软件中的描述性统计方法进行分析。研究发现：1）英语 专业学生使用每类阅读策略都比非英语专业学生频繁。 两者在使用认知策略和社会情感 策略时无明显差异,但是在使用元认知策略上存在明显差异。 也就是说, 英语专业学生与 非英语专业学生都很频繁使用多数认知策略,而在使用元认知策略方面， 英语专业学生比 非英语专业学生使用更频繁。在 22 项元认知策略中，有 8 项元认知策略是两者都很少 使用的，例如：有计划的进行阅读，在阅读前给自己设定完成阅读的时间，阅读时注意 作者在文章中用词的呼应性，阅读时能跳过不理解的生词和句子，注意句子的省略成分 并在以后的阅读中来检测自己的预测，就文章提出质疑而不是一味接受作者的观点，定 期复习阅读过的材料及生词以及定期总结以前的阅读以便下次阅读有新提高。 从总体上 说，英语专业学生在使用阅读策略时无明显偏好，而非英语专业学生则偏向使用认知策 略。2）成功英语专业学生和非英语专业学生在认知策略和社会情感策略的使用频率均 较高。只有在“阅读完一篇文章后总结文章大意及作者观点”这一策略上的使用频率较 abstract in chinese ii 低。两对比组在元认知策略的使用频率也较高，且存在明显差异。此外，两对比组在 5 项元认知策略上的使用频率都相对较低（1，21，18，39，43） 。成功英语专业学生和非 英语专业学生使用各项策略都有明显的集中趋势。3）不成功阅读者之间也有差异，不 成功英语专业学生对 3 项认知策略（11，17，31） ，6 项元认知策略（2，5，10，18，39， 45）及 1 项社会策略（46）的使用频率明显高于不成功非英语专业学生。另外，两对比 组除 2 项元认知策略（7，20）使用频率稍高，对其他阅读策略使用的频率都较低。整 体看来，不成功英语专业学生同样也无明显偏向使用某一类策略，而不成功非英语专业 学生则偏向使用认知策略。 文章共有五个部分。第一章简要介绍该实证研究的来源，研究目标和研究方法。第 二章清晰叙述了阅读策略这一领域所取得成绩。 第三章是对中国语境的英语专业学生与 非英语专业学生的阅读策略使用情况的实证研究。第四章是根据现在的实证研究发现， 对将来教学的启示。结论部分讨论了该实证研究的局限性，并提出将来进一步研究的方 向。 关键词：关键词： 阅读策略；阅读策略； 认知策略；认知策略； 元认知策略；元认知策略； 社会情感策略；社会情感策略； 阅读策略使用阅读策略使用 abstract in english iii abstract in english since the 1970s, second language research interest have shifted from how to teach to how to learn and the studies on learners individual difference have been concerned in sla research. researchers pay more attention to learning process, so there has been a great upsurge in research on second language learning strategies. research on reading strategies is one of the subjects in this field. in general, reading strategy research mainly contains two major aspects: one is on the use of reading strategy, which includes the investigation of different reading strategies used between successful and unsuccessful readers and exploring the relationship between reading strategy use and reading comprehension achievement; the other is on reading strategy training. both western and domestic researchers have engaged in a great number of researches concerning reading strategy use. western researches far outweigh domestic researches on both theories and practices. most of the findings and theories of sla have not been closely examined in the chinese context. though domestic researchers have paid attention to reading strategy use and training, their research focus is always on english majors or non-english majors. few researchers focus on reading strategy use employed by english majors and non-english majors. most researches are conducted without a base of statistical data. therefore, this thesis carries out the quantitative study to explore the status of reading strategy use between english majors and non-english majors to reveal the differences and similarities between successful and unsuccessful readers. the survey was conducted among 200 college students, including 118 non-english majors and 82 english majors, randomly selected from xiangtan university and hunan science and technology university. all the figures and tables are obtained by means of spss 12.0 for windows with descriptive statistical method and relevant test methods. as a result, i get the following findings: 1) by comparison, english majors make more frequent use in each type of reading strategy than non-english majors. on the other hand, english majors and non-english majors do not have significant differences in their use of cognitive strategy. however, the two groups show some distinctive differences in metacognitive strategy use. that is to say, english majors and non-english majors use some primary cognitive strategies more frequently than some abstract in english iv metacognitive strategies. among 22 metacognitive strategies, there are three strategies least used by english majors and non-english majors. as to social-affective strategies, they used them in the middle-frequency range. on the whole, english majors dont show any obvious preference in the use of three types of reading strategies, while non-english majors show some preferences in using cognitive strategies. 2) some significant differences in the use of metacognitive strategy exist between successful english majors and successful non-english majors. the greater differences lie in eight items. both of the two groups use five items (1, 18, 21, 39, 43) least. as for the use of cognitive strategies, the two groups dont show significant differences, and they used most cognitive strategies frequently, only item 41 is an exception. in comparison with cognitive strategies, all successful students use social-affective strategies a bit more frequently. in a word, successful english majors and non-english majors show a much clearer central tendency in using each type of reading strategies. 3) there is no significant difference in the use of cognitive strategies and social-affective strategies between unsuccessful english majors and unsuccessful non-english majors. but some significant differences exist in using metacognitive strategies between the two groups. especially, there are eight items that all unsuccessful students used least (1, 5, 8, 18. 39, 42, 43). this paper includes five parts. chapter i is devoted to the origin of the present study, the general goals of this study and the methodology. chapter ii describes the previous achievements on reading strategy research. it is necessary to review the research literature concerned with reading strategy use in a second language. it includes western and domestic studies. chapter iii is a comprehensive description research procedure along with its underlying hypotheses and data analysis. this thesis proposes three hypotheses to identify whether there are some obvious differences and similarities between english majors and non-english majors. after the detailed analysis and discussion, the results show that hypothesis 2 and hypothesis 3 are not true completely, while hypothesis 1 is true. chapter iv attempts to find some pedagogical implications for english learning and teaching in chinese setting. conclusion is devoted to the future research in this area. key words: reading strategy; cognitive strategy; metacognitive strategy; social-affective strategy; reading strategy us 湘潭大学湘潭大学 学位论文原创性声明学位论文原创性声明 本人郑重声明：所呈交的论文是本人在导师的指导下独立进行研究所取得的 研究成果。除了文中特别加以标注引用的内容外，本论文不包含任何其他个人或 集体已经发表或撰写的成果作品。对本文的研究做出重要贡献的个人和集体，均 已在文中以明确方式标明。本人完全意识到本声明的法律后果由本人承担。 作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 学位论文版权使用授权书学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解学校有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，同意学校保 留并向国家有关部门或机构送交论文的复印件和电子版，允许论文被查阅和借 阅。本人授权湘潭大学可以将本学位论文的全部或部分内容编入有关数据库进行 检索，可以采用影印、缩印或扫描等复制手段保存和汇编本学位论文。 涉密论文按学校规定处理。 作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 导师签名： 日期： 年 月 日 chapter i introduction 1 chapter i introduction 1.1 the origin of the present study since the 1970s, in western countries, language teaching researchers have shifted their attention from teaching method to learning methods, and paid more attention to investigating the process of learning (oxford, 1990). this refocusing has created an exploration of research aiming at the differences among individuals. the early studies (rubin, 1975; naiman et al. 1978) anticipated that successful learners are effective because of special ways of processing information. and there was the position that the strategies are not just the preservation of highly capable individuals, but could be learned by others. reading comprehension is one of the most important skills in l2 learning, while many learners feel it is very hard to improve reading proficiency in daily reading and examinations although they spend a lot of time on it. nuttall (1996:14-16) found that readers showed the following difficulties: 1) readers are not familiar with the code in which it is written; 2) the readers language knowledge is limited, they are puzzled by the complex of concepts expressed; 3) the difficult lies not in the lack of previous knowledge on certain subject; and 4) the readers vocabulary is limited. s in fact, in the same reading circumstance, some readers can always succeed in reading, while some others fail all along. one suggested way to find the solution is to study strategies of good readers, and to direct the attention of non-successful readers to how successful readers get the efficient reading. so many researchers have begun to recognize the importance of strategies esl students used while reading. they shifted their attention from a focus on the product of reading to an emphasis on determining the strategies that readers use in various reading context (anderson, 1991:460). empirical studies have focused on the types of strategies readers use as well as the transfer of reading strategies from a second language (alderson, 1984; baker and brown, 1984; garner, 1987; padron and waxman, 1988). additional researches have been directed at improving the l2 readers usage of strategies through specific training (christine nuttall, 1989; william grabe, 1991; anderson, 1999; chapter i introduction 2 oded and walters, 2001). in china, researches on reading strategies have been increased in recent years, among which the following are worth mentioning: zhou xiaorong (2000) conducted a study of the relationship between learning strategies and reading comprehension; liu dandan (2002) reported a survey on reading strategies employed by chinese english learners; liu yichun (2002) made a study on reading strategies use between successful learners and unsuccessful learners. almost all empirical studies on reading strategy were mainly concerned with english majors or non-english majors singly, while few researches have been done on both non-english major students and english major students. undoubtedly, there exists some difference between english majors and non-english majors in their process of learning english, such as the amount of time and energy devoted to learning english, the purposes of grasping english. besides, english majors occupy a much larger proportion in china, therefore the comparative study on both english majors and non-english majors perspective turns out to be much more practical. on the other hand, by some teachers teaching experiences, they have found that the students dont use the metacognitive strategies properly and sufficiently. consequently, they adjust the teaching methods and attempt to do some preliminary training of metacognitive strategies. to a certain extent, their instructions are worth advocating. so i hope i can provide a persuasive and practical evidence for them by the audiovisual and reliable statistical data obtained from my empirical study. 1.2 objectives the present study addresses the following research questions: 1) what kinds of reading strategies english majors use more frequently in reading, and what kinds of reading strategies non-english majors use more frequently; 2) whether successful english majors share common reading strategies with successful non-english majors，and，if so, what they are. 3) whether unsuccessful english-majors share common reading strategies with unsuccessful non-english majors, and，if so, what they are. 1.3 methodology this study adopts a quantitative approach. a 5-point likert scale questionnaire is chapter i introduction 3 employed to obtain the quantitative data in this thesis. the samples obtained from stratified sampling consist of 200 third-year college students from xiangtan university and hunan science and technology university. the subjects include 118 non-english majors and 82 english majors. all data analyses are performed with the system of statistical package for social science (spss 12.0), which includes independent sample t-test, factor analysis, reliability coefficients and descriptive statistics. chapter ii literature review on reading strategies 4 chapter ii literature review on reading strategies in this chapter, i will introduce the reading models and some of the early studies on reading and reading strategies in second language acquisition in order to establish a framework for describing the research presented in later chapters. 2.1 a brief introduction to reading models understanding the process of reading has been the focus of much research. on the ground of researches on the nature of reading, some theories about reading have been established .models of how the printed text is understood have been concerned in this research (goodman, 1973; gough, 1985; stanorich, 1980; cited in carrel et al, 1988). broadly speaking, these theories can be divided into three types: the bottom-up model, represented by goughs model; the top-down model, represented by goodmans model; and the interactive model, represented by rumelharts model. these models are mainly based on schema theory. the schema theory is a theory that cognitive psychologists employ to explain the mental process of understanding discourse. according to schema theory, comprehending a text is an interactive process between the readers background knowledge and the text. anderson and pearson (1984, 37-53) stated a schema is an abstract knowledge structure which reader has previously acquired and brings to comprehend the text while reading. this previously acquired knowledge is called the readers background knowledge and the previously acquired knowledge structures are called schema. in the schema theory, top-down and bottom-up processing should occur at all levels of analysis simultaneously. 2.1.1 bottom-up model before 1960, reading in english was regarded as a decoding process. the writer was viewed as an encoder. he or she had a message in his mind which he wanted somebody else to know. in order to make this possible he must first put it into words, that is, he must encode it into a text (in my study, it only refers to a piece of written language). and the reader was viewed as a decoder who must interpret the authors intended meaning, that is to say, the chapter ii literature review on reading strategies 5 reader must decode the message the text contains. in view of this, reading means decoding words and getting the meaning. it is “a decoding process of reconstructing the authors intended meaning via recognizing the printed letters and words, and building up a meaning for a text from the smallest textual units at the bottom (letters and words) to larger and larger units at the top (phrases, clauses, intersentential linkages) ” (carrell et al. 1988:23). this is the so-called bottom-up model. according to this model, the reader relies on the text to get the ideas. he or she proceeds from identifying words, to putting them together into clauses and sentences, to establishing the meaning of the text. in this model, reading is a basic process of building symbols into words, words into sentences, and sentences into meaning; and reading comprehensions are purely linguistic problems. but many reading researchers found that such model is too simple to explain the process of reading comprehension and that it is unfitting to view reading as word identification. they explored that, the reader has the ability to combine the meanings of words to get the meanings of sentences, but it does not mean that he really understands the authors intention in writing the text. besides, reader plays a totally passive role in this model. he or she serves as an information-processor. obviously, the bottom-up model is unsatisfactory in explaining the process of reading comprehension. 2.1.2 top-down model in contrast to bottom-up model, goodman (1967) proposed a model from the psycholinguistic perspective to explain the reading process. this psycholinguistic model of reading was later elaborated by coady (1979) and was referred to as top-down model. goodman described reading as “a psycholinguistic guessing game” (1967) in which the “reader reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which has been encoded by a writer as a graphic display” (1971). goodman regarded this act of construction of meaning as being an ongoing cyclical process of sampling from the input text, predicting, testing and confirming or revising those predictions and sampling further (carrell 2) aiming to enhance reading comprehension and overcome comprehension difficulties; 3) behavioral and mental. 2.2.2 the classification of reading strategies a number of studies have attempted to classify reading strategies appealed by l2 language learners (anderson, 1991; block, 1986; hosenfeld, 1977). among these various categorizations, some developed on the ground of the reading process models, and others are made by utilizing the frameworks of language learning strategy. blocks classification block (1986:466-467) proposed two levels of reading strategies: general comprehension and local linguistic strategies. the former includes comprehension-gathering and comprehension-monitoring strategies, which has following subcategories: (1) anticipate content, i.e., the reader predicts what content will occur in succeeding portions of text; (2) recognize text structure, i.e., the reader distinguishes between main points and supporting details or discusses the purpose of information; (3) integrate information, i.e., the reader connects new information with previously stated content; (4) question information in the text, i.e., the reader questions the significance or veracity of content;