No abstract

Research has shown that males often struggle with the demands of college, one of which involves comprehending academic texts. Many males, however, do understand course readings and are successful students. Unfortunately, little is known about how successful and struggling college males differ in their use of reading strategies, the effective use of which is vital for academic text comprehension. The following study aimed to fill this gap by analyzing first-semester college males’ strategy use and investigating whether it was related to academic success. The results were similar to other studies of college students’ strategy use and suggest that many males are unwilling or unable to use certain strategies. In addition, a small number of significant correlations between strategy use and academic success were found. Explanations for such results and pedagogical interventions to help first-semester college males better use reading strategies are considered.

No abstract

This study examined the metacognitive strategic knowledge possessed by Chinese and Taiwanese ESL learners (N=7) studying at a North American university. Specifically, it sought to discover the factors that influence their decisions about whether or not to use reading strategies. However, instead of analyzing participants’ use of individual strategies, it looked at the common themes which influenced their overall strategy use. In order to do so, participants first filled out a 30-item quantitative survey called the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) (Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2002). They then wrote justifications for their responses to each item. The results showed that time, memory, and text comprehension influenced participants’ strategy selection. In addition, the content of the text and its length and difficulty also influenced strategy use. Finally, learners avoided certain strategies because they simply did not like them. Pedagogical implications for Chinese L1 students planning to study at the university level in the United States or other majority English-speaking countries are discussed, as are areas for future research.

eds). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2006. Pp. x þ 268. ISBN 1-85359-861-5 (pbk): £24.95.