1. The document summarizes a study that investigated differences in reading comprehension among college students of varying English proficiency and gender. It examined how factors like motivation, strategy use, prior knowledge and language ability influence reading. 2. The methodology involved surveying 100 English major students about their reading strategies, efficacy and interest using a Likert scale questionnaire. It then used independent t-tests to analyze differences between high/low proficiency students and males/females. 3. The literature review discussed how motivation, prior knowledge, memory, vocabulary, language skills and strategy use can impact comprehension, citing several studies on each topic. It aimed to understand how these factors differ between proficiency levels and gender.

1. College Students’ Reading Motivation and Strategy Use: A Focus on Language Proficiency and Gender Presenter: Ztu-Yin Livia Pan Instructor: Dr. Pi-Ying Teresa Hsu Date: June 8th, 2011

2. Contents I Introduction Literature Review II III Methodology 2

3. Introduction Background Purpose of the study Research questions 3

4. Background Motivation is a force that moves people to act and it includes choices of which activities to perform, persistence at these activities, and the level of effort expended. (Guthrie & Wigifield, 1999) 4

5. Background If students are highly motivated to read, they are more likely to become engaged readers who are knowledgeable, strategic, and socially interactive. (Gambrell, 1996) 5 5

6. Purpose of the study -to investigate if there is any significant difference in under graduated students’ reading comprehension between high proficiency and low proficiency learners, and between genders. 6

7. Research questions What are the differences between high- proficiency and low-proficiency students in English reading comprehension? 2. What are the differences between male and female students in English reading comprehension? 7

8. Literature Review Reading interest Prior knowledge Memory span Vocabulary Language proficiency Reading strategy 8

9. Prior knowledge Distortions (Anderson & Pearson 1984) Misinterpretations 9 *Distortions or misinterpretations may result when readers attempt to make sense of unfamiliar ideas by drawing on their own previous experience or background knowledge.

10. Reading interest Students’ interest in a topic plays a very important role in their comprehension, if students have little interest or negative attitudes to the reading materials, they are unable to appreciate the topic in the text. (Schumm, Mangrum, Gordon & Doucette, 1992) 10

11. Memory span If readers lack facilities of memory, they may be unable to relate reading to previous experience or previous knowledge. As a result, they may fail to recall main ideas of the text and the sequence of previous knowledge. (O’shea, 1994) 11

12. Language proficiency ESL learners with insufficient communicative competence may have difficulty in predicting what authors will say in certain situations and in interpreting what authors actually mean from their non-verbal messages. (Lin, 2000) 12

13. Vocabulary Vocabulary learning is a series of tasks varying with the word being taught, learners’ knowledge of the word, and the concept it represents and the depth and precision of meaning students need to acquire. (Scott & Nagy, 1994) 13

14. Reading strategy Researchers of reading comprehension strategies have found that readers who are able to use various flexible strategies in reading are more successful in comprehending written texts. (Cohen, 1990; Chamot, 1993 & Rubin, 1981) 14

15. Processes of Reading The cognition of reading assumes an active reader who constructs meaning through the integration of existing and new knowledge and the flexible use of strategies to foster, monitor, regulate, and maintain comprehension. (Dole et al., 1991) 15

16. Processes of Reading In the reading process, background knowledge in language comprehension can be referred to schema theory. (Adams & Collins, 1979; Rumelhart, 1980) 16

17. Schema close attention build relationships decide infer anticipate Anderson and Pearson (1984) 17 *Schemata help learners to anticipate, to infer and to decide what is or is not important, to build relationships between ideas, and to decide what information needs close attention.

18. Methodology Participants Procedures Instrument Statistical Analysis 18

19. Participants 50 males and 50 females English-major college students in Chaoyang University of Technology. 19

21. Time: Nov, 2011

22. Participants: about 15 males and 15 female English-major college students.

23. Time: Nov, 2011

24. Use SPSS Independent T-test to analysis the data. 20

25. Instrument The research instrument is a questionnaire with five-point Likert scale. Deeper strategies α= .84 Surface strategies α= .75 Four types of strategies Reading efficacy Reading task value (Pressley & Afflerbach's 1995) 21

26. Questionnaire strongly strongly Items disagree agree Deeper strategies I tried to understand the content better by relating it to something I know. 1 2 3 4 5 Surface strategies I tried to memorize as much as possible. 1 2 3 4 5 Reading efficacy I am not particularly good at understanding the content of what I read. 1 2 3 4 5 Reading task value I am always interested in understanding what I read. 1 2 3 4 5 22

27. Statistical Analysis What are the differences between high- proficiency and low-proficiency students in English reading comprehension? 2. What are the differences between male and female students in English reading comprehension? Independent T-test 23

28. Thanks for your listening. 24

29. 25