A Study of EFL Reading Test-Taking Strategies Used by Senior High School Students in Southern Taiwan:the GSAT (General Scholastic Ability Test) English

• Main Authors: CHEN, HONG-JIE, 陳鴻杰
• Other Authors: PAN, YI-CHING
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/xbc3h5

碩士 === 國立屏東大學 === 應用英語學系碩士班 === 106 === 　　In the traditional English courses, reading is considered the most important skill in teaching (Susser & Rob, 1990). For the second language learners, the use of effective reading strategies will affect their understanding of the texts. Most Taiwanese senior high school students, however, are passive learners in English reading and lack of knowledge of strategy use. To date, compared to the existing literature of language learning strategies, merely a few studies address the issues on the GSAT English reading strategies test-taking use. This study was to explore the EFL English reading test-taking strategy use adopted by 206 of four 12th-grade senior high school students in Kaohsiung County. They were classified into the high-proficiency group, the middle-proficiency group, and the low-proficiency group, the high-, mid-, and low-proficient were chosen based on their graded scores of the GSAT English 2017. Instruments included one reading strategy questionnaire and interviews were also conducted to obtain qualitative information. The followings are the important findings of the study: (1) students utilized more metacognitive strategies; (2) senior high school students employed more monitoring in metacognitive, secondly, planning, whereas they employed fewer evaluating strategies; (3) senior high school students used more integrating in cognitive, secondly, initial reading, then, identifying important information, whereas they used fewer inference making strategies; (4) there were significant differences among high-, mid-, and low-achievers in their overall types of strategy use. Besides, low-achievers applied fewer metacognitive and cognitive strategies. Finally, the results of the study will improve our understanding of Taiwanese senior high school students’ English test-taking strategy use, and also pedagogical implications for English instructors and suggestions for further studies are provided.