The Relation between Reading Strategy Use and Reading Performance among Students

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between the use of reading strategies and reading achievement between high and low EFL university students in Ethiopia. To this effect, sixty students were selected (30 top high achievers and 30 least low achievers) using stratified sampling technique. The Survey of Reading Strategies and Reading Comprehension Test were employed to discover students’ reading strategy use, and to measure their reading ability respectively. Thus, thirty reading strategies of the survey and fifty reading comprehension questions were administered to students. The data gathered was statistically analyzed through descriptive statistics, independent samples t-test and Pearson correlation. The findings of the study revealed that High achievers adopted a diverse and more reading strategies in higher frequency compared to low achievers. This difference between the groups was significant. The result also showed that there was a relationship between students’ three main strategies use (i.e., global, problem-solving and support reading strategies and their reading achievement). Based on the findings, it was recommended to raise awareness to enhance students' use of various strategies at higher frequency and the low achievers must be encouraged to use the reading strategies more frequently in general and global reading strategies in particular.