College Students’ Reading Motivation and Strategy Use: A Focus on Language Proficiency and Gender

Presenter: Ztu-Yin Livia PanInstructor: Dr. Pi-Ying Teresa HsuDate: June 8th, 2011

Contents

Introduction

Methodology

Literature ReviewII

III

I

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Introduction

Background

Purpose of the study

Research questions

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BackgroundMotivation is a force that moves people to act and it includes choices of which activities to perform, persistence at these activities, and the level of effort expended.

(Guthrie & Wigifield, 1999)

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Background

If students are highly motivated to read, they are more likely to become engaged readers who are knowledgeable, strategic, and socially interactive.

(Gambrell, 1996)

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Purpose of the study-to investigate if there is any significant difference in under graduated students’ reading comprehension between high proficiency and low proficiency learners, and between genders.

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Research questions

1. What are the differences between high- proficiency and low-proficiency students in

English reading comprehension?

2. What are the differences between male and female students in English reading comprehension?

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Literature Review

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Vocabulary

Memory span

Reading strategy

Prior knowledge

Language proficiency

Reading interest

Prior knowledge

Distortions

Misinterpretations (Anderson & Pearson 1984)

9*Distortions or misinterpretations may result when readers attempt to make sense of unfamiliar ideas by drawing on their own previous experience or background knowledge.

Reading interestStudents’ interest in a topic plays a very important role in their comprehension, if students have little interest or negative attitudes to the reading materials, they are unable to appreciate the topic in the text. (Schumm, Mangrum, Gordon & Doucette, 1992)

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Memory span

If readers lack facilities of memory, they may be unable to relate reading to previous experience or previous knowledge. As a result, they may fail to recall main ideas of the text and the sequence of previous knowledge.

(O’shea, 1994)

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Language proficiencyESL learners with insufficient communicative competence may have difficulty in predicting what authors will say in certain situations and in interpreting what authors actually mean from their non-verbal messages. (Lin, 2000)

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Vocabulary

Vocabulary learning is a series of tasks varying with the word being taught, learners’ knowledge of the word, and the concept it represents and the depth and precision of meaning students need to acquire.

(Scott & Nagy, 1994)

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Reading strategy

Researchers of reading comprehension strategies have found that readers who are able to use various flexible strategies in reading are more successful in comprehending written texts.

(Cohen, 1990; Chamot, 1993 & Rubin, 1981)

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Processes of ReadingThe cognition of reading assumes an active reader who constructs meaning through the integration of existing and new knowledge and the flexible use of strategies to foster, monitor, regulate, and maintain comprehension.

(Dole et al., 1991)

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Processes of Reading

In the reading process, background knowledge in language comprehension can be referred to schema theory.

(Adams & Collins, 1979; Rumelhart, 1980)

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Schema

Anderson and Pearson (1984)

anticipate

infer

decide

build relationships

close attention

17*Schemata help learners to anticipate, to infer and to decide what is or is not important, to build relationships between ideas, and to decide what information needs close attention.

Methodology

Participants

Procedures

Instrument

Statistical Analysis

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Participants50 males and 50 females English-major college students in Chaoyang University of Technology.

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Procedures

• Participants: about 15 males and 15 female English-major college students.

• Time: Nov, 2011

• Participants: about 50 males and 50 females English-major college students.

• Time: Nov, 2011

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• Use SPSS Independent

T-test to analysis the data.

Pilot study

Formal study

Data analysis

QuestionnaireQuestionnaire

Instrument

Deeper strategiesα= .84

Surface strategiesα= .75

Reading efficacy Reading task value

Four types of strategies

(Pressley & Afflerbach's 1995)21

The research instrument is a questionnaire with five-point Likert scale.

Questionnaire strongly stronglyItems disagree agree

Deeper strategiesI tried to understand the content betterby relating it to something I know. 1 2 3 4 5

Surface strategiesI tried to memorize as much as possible. 1 2 3 4 5

Reading efficacyI am not particularly good at understandingthe content of what I read. 1 2 3 4 5

Reading task valueI am always interested in understanding what I read. 1 2 3 4 5 22

Statistical Analysis1. What are the differences between high- proficiency and low-proficiency students in

English reading comprehension?

2. What are the differences between male and female students in English reading comprehension?

Independent T-test23

Thanks for your listening.

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