A Study on Taiwanese College Students' Use of Global Reading Strategies in Different Discourse Types

This study is intended as an investigation of the influence of two western expository structures, namely collection and problem/solution, on the reading strategies used by Taiwanese English L2 speakers during real-time reading. After the administration of an intermediate-level reading proficiency test to a sample of 479 students, 280 intermediate L2 English readers were selected from four colleges in Taiwan. The 280 intermediate-level participants selected were given a passage to read. The participants were grouped by the two discourse types. The participants at two of the Taiwanese colleges read a passage written in the collection structure, and those at the other two colleges were instructed to read a passage containing the same information, but organized in the 'problem/solution' structure. After reading, the participants filled in a reading strategy survey based on their reading of the passage. They also took a reading comprehension test based on the passage they had read. Both descriptive and inferential statistical analyses such as t-tests were applied to the results, to examine whether there were significant differences in the participants' choice of reading strategies when they read the two types of reading passage. The t-test result showed that there were significant differences between the two discourse types, problem-solving and collection, in the participants' use of global reading strategies (p＜.01).

關鍵字

Discourse Types ； Problem-solving ； Collection ； Global Reading Strategies

並列摘要

本研究調查兩種說明文結構─「匯集式」及「問題對策式」，對於臺灣第二語言讀者英文閱讀策略使用的影響。易言之，這兩種說明文結構─「匯集式」及「問題對策式」，對於臺灣第二語言讀者在即時英文閱讀中閱讀策略使用的影響是本研究的焦點。在四百七十九位同學接受一份英文閱讀能力測驗之後，有兩百八十位同學被認定為中等程度的英文閱讀者。閱讀能力測驗完成之後，一百六十七位研究參與者閱讀一篇用「匯集式」結構寫成的文章，而其他一百一十三位則閱讀另一篇含有相同內容，但是卻是用「問題對策式」結構寫成的文章。閱讀文章之後，他們填寫一份閱讀策略問卷，並且回答針對剛才讀過的文章所設計的一份閱讀理解測驗。t-test 的結果顯示在這兩種說明文結構─「匯集式」及「問題對策式」之間，參與者在總體閱讀策略使用上有顯著的不同 (p＜.01)。