Bottom-up vs Top-down Model: The Perception of Reading Strategies among Thai University Students

Abstract

Reading strategies have been declared as a vital role in reading comprehension among the students whose English is their second or foreign language. The use of reading strategies would help the learners to deeper understand the text so that they could achieve their tasks. The present study then investigates the use of reading strategies by focusing on the bottom-up and top-down models for both academic and business texts among Thai students in tertiary level. Two hundred-seventy non-simple random undergraduate students participated in this study. The forty-five-item questionnaire was delivered to the participants. The findings were that top-down reading strategies were used the most for both academic and business reading, whereas bottom-up reading strategies were reported the least on both kinds of text. The results suggest that larger numbers of participants, correction between the proficiency and the use of strategies, in-depth interview, and strategies used between low and high proficient readers should be examined.