Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of reading strategies by the university Business English majors in relation to their levels of reading proficiency. The participants were 926 university Business English majors from 6 universities in southwest China. The Strategy Questionnaire for Business English Reading (SQBER) and the Business English Reading Comprehension Test (BERCT) were used to collect the data. The results showed that the students with good reading proficiency reported significantly greater use of reading strategies than the students with either fair or poor reading proficiency at the overall and category levels. At the individual strategy level, 25 out of the 45 reading strategies across the inventory varied significantly in terms of the students’ levels of reading proficiency. Most of these strategies with significant differences showed positive correlation, with the higher reading proficiency students reporting employing reading strategies significantly more frequently than the lower reading proficiency students. In addition, the students with different proficiency levels had different tendencies in the use of individual reading strategies.

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