고등학생 영어 숙달도가 영어 읽기 전략 및 읽기 도구 사용 습관에 미치는 영향

The impact of EFL students English proficiency on reading strategies and usage of annotation tools

The present study was designed to examine metacognitive ability in Korean high school EFL learners’ reading comprehension. Fifty-seven Korean high school students participated in this study, and the rate of reading strategy use, the rate of reading strategy use in response to the text difficulty, and the usage of annotation tools were analyzed. The students were divided into two groups according to their proficiency levels (high vs. low) for comparison. Results showed that the high proficiency group had higher metacognitive and self-regulatory abilities. Additionally, Korean high school EFL learners had a tendency to rely more on bottom-up processing than topdown processing when reading. The excessive use of annotation tools (e.g., slash) indicates that the readers were overly conscious of language form, which may have led to unsuccessful reading comprehension. These findings suggest that a need for a strategy-based instruction, especially on employing global reading strategies. Adequate usage of annotation tools also deserves instructional attention in EFL classrooms.