Re-examining the Relationship between Strategy Use and L2 Reading Performance

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to more precisely examine the relationship between strategy use and reading performance in L2 by taking into account the possible variation in the relationship according to the manner of eliciting strategy use and the type of reading performance observed. Thirty three students majoring in education participated in the study. Strategy use was elicited by three different measures - survey (administered without a text to read), think-aloud (while reading a text), and check-list (after reading the text). Two different types of task were used as the measure of reading performance - a reading comprehension test and a summarization task. The results showed that there was considerable variation in the relationships between reading strategy use and reading performance depending on the elicitation method, that there were specific strategy categories which better explained the performance in a certain type of reading performance, and that frequent use of certain strategies even could be detrimental in reading performance. Implications for both L2 reading instruction and reading research were stated along with limitations of the current study.