An Exploratory Study of Korean College Students' Reading Strategy Use in Test Preparing Text Reading

This paper endeavored to explore the ways in which Korean college students used reading strategies when reading test preparing text in English. Four college students at a university participated in this study. The students read a different reading passage from the textbook that they were using in their TOEIC class at the time of the study. They were asked to report what he or she was thinking while reading and were interviewed to clarify any confusion. The think-aloud protocols and interview data were analyzed regarding reading strategy use and reading process. There are several common characteristics of each student's reading strategy use in TOEIC passage reading such as setting reading goals, previewing, guessing, re-reading, underlining, paraphrasing, and going back and forth in text. The most interesting strategies they used were reading aloud or analyzing parts of unfamiliar words, skipping and translating. This study demonstrated that not only their individual learning experience in learning to read in English but also the level of awareness of linguistic differences between Korean and English seemed to contribute to their reading strategy use in reading English text.