Investigations on College EFL Readers" Awareness, Preferences, and Learning Strategies

Investigations on College EFL Readers" Awareness, Preferences, and Learning Strategies

  The primary goal of this study was to explore college EFL readers" perceptions about reading in English and to investigate the learning strategies they employed during text processing. The participants were 107 college students aged 19-28 years from mixed majors; more than half were freshmen. According to scores attained from the reading comprehension test, they were labeled into two groups (proficient and less-proficient readers) and responded to an in-class questionnaire. All the quantitative items on the questionnaire were tallied and summed. The findings disclosed that: (1) a majority of the proficient and less-proficient readers believe that L2 reading proficiency correlates with L1 reading proficiency; (2) L2 reading performance varies depending on the nature of text; (3) many in both groups manifest a lack of perception of progress, low confidence, and anxiety toward EFL reading; (4) both groups of readers implement a variety of learning strategies, but the proficient readers are better able to recognize and repair miscomprehension than their counterparts; and (5) the less-proficient readers" obsession with vocabulary coexists with a meaning-centered view of reading. Pedagogical implications for EFL classroom teachers are suggested.