The Effects of Three Reading Strategy Instructions on Strategic Reading and Summary Performance of College Students with Low Reading Abilities

[[abstract]] The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of three reading strategy instructions on strategic reading and summary performance of college students with low reading ability. Experiment one（E1）was designed to investigate the reading strategy difference between good readers and poor readers. Participants were 42 college students with different reading ability (21 good readers, 21 poor readers.) The think aloud method was adopted to investigate the reading strategy difference between two groups. The results in E1 showed that students with high reading ability use re-construction, elaboration, and monitoring strategy more often than the students with low reading ability. The design of experiment two （E2）was based on the empirical finding of E1. Three reading strategy instructions with direct teaching and reciprocal teaching were conducted to investigate the effects of strategy instruction on low reading ability college students’ reading strategy and summary performance. The participants in E2 were 83 students among four groups. There were 19 in the elaboration strategy group (G1), 20 in the organization strategy group (G2), 24 in the monitor strategy group (G3), and 20 in the control group (G4). The G1, G2 and G3 except G4 received 50 minutes reading comprehension strategies courses once a week in four weeks. The strategy training included three modes of instruction: elaboration, organization, and monitor during the fall of 2009. Students were taught and practice reading strategy during the training. They were asked to summary after a think aloud procedure at testing sessions. The data obtained were analyzed by ANCOVA and trend analysis. The results were as follows: The outcome of the mid-test displayed that the improvement of reading strategy performance among G1, G2 and G3 was increased. The improvement of summary performance increased significantly only in G3. The outcome of the post-test displayed that the improvement of reading strategy performance among G1, G2 and G3 was increased. G2 had a better improvement than G1 and G3. The outcome of the post-test illustrated that the improvement of summary performance increased only in G1 and G2.The trend analysis at three time points: pre-test, mid-test, and post-test was adopted for the progress of strategy and summary performance . There is a linear trend for the G1, G2 and G3. The results of this study suggested that the three reading strategy instructions can help to improve the utilization of reading strategies in G1, G2 and G3. The effects of the three reading strategies on summary performance were better in G2 than in G1. The summary performance in G3 relates with the difficulty of texts. The summary performance of G3 is better in easier texts. Moreover, the achievement of summary performance in G3 decreased when the texts became more difficult.