Chinese Graduate Students' Metacognitive Awareness of EFL Academic Reading Strategies

This study aims to investigate Chinese EFL non-English-major graduate students' metacognitive awareness of academic reading strategies and the relationship between their English academic reading proficiency and reading strategy use. The participants are 173 Chinese first-year non-English-major graduate students at an upper-level university in China. They took an English academic reading comprehension test (IELTS) and responded to a reading strategy use questionnaire (SORS). The findings indicate that the participants use reading strategies moderately with preference for problem-solving strategies. There was a positive relationship between the participants' reading proficiency and their use of reading strategies. The high proficiency readers outperformed the low proficiency participants in the use of eight individual strategies as well as in the frequency of the strategies classified into three subscales. The findings suggest the need for explicit reading strategy instruction and practice to improve students' metacognitive awareness. This study also points to the need for further research examining other factors that may explain variation in reading proficiency.