Jonathan C. Hull 

King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Thailand

Yi-chun Sami Hou

Taipei Municipal Xin-Yi Elementary School, Taiwan

 

Abstract

This study was originally intended to describe reading behavior among undergraduate social science students at a university in Taiwan, as revealed through concurrent introspection, and to compare it with that of their counterparts in Hong Kong as reported in Hull (2000). However, during pilot-testing in Taiwan of the text used in the Hong Kong study (a short academic article), it became obvious that a much shorter and linguistically simpler text would have to be substituted to yield data rich enough for a viable analysis (a magazine article was chosen). Thus, since a direct comparison between the two contexts was no longer possible, the findings in the current study are descriptive. The data revealed a wide range of reading strategies reported among the Taiwanese university students. Their reports tended to focus on meaning and personal reactions to the text rather than on language; there was also evidence of considerable individual variation. The concluding discussion includes a focus on factors, such as degree of exposure to English, which might have led to the apparently large gap in the L2 reading proficiency levels of university students in these two Chinese-speaking East Asian contexts.

 

Key Words: adult foreign language reading, reading at tertiary level, reading strategies, second-language reading proficiency

 

台灣大學生的第二語言閱讀行為:心理層面之策略研究

 

Jonathan C. Hull

泰國蒙庫國王大學語言學系

Yi-chun Sami Hou

台北市立信義國民小學

 

摘要

本篇研究意欲透過內省法來描述在台灣社會科學院大學生之閱讀行為,並且以本研究結果與由Hull(2000)所作類似背景的香港學生閱讀行為研究比較之。然而,在測試期間,發現原本以香港學生為受試者的研究中,所使用的短文並不能直接採納用於本研究中,因為以台灣學生的背景,很顯然的需要更短與文字上更簡易的文章來取代,以得出較為豐富的資料進行分析(一篇雜誌文章因此被選取)。由於直接比較台灣、香港兩地的實驗結果基準點已經不同,所以本實驗簡化為單純的敘述型研究。結果顯示,台灣大學生認為自己曾使用廣泛、多樣化的閱讀策略。而學生的報告中指出,他/她們多半傾向於關注在字面意義與個人對文章的感想回應,而非語言文字本身。同時也有證據顯示,這其中充斥著相當多的個人差異。本文結論部份包含了對於影響因素的探討,例如接觸英文的深淺程度,這可能造成在這兩個中文為母語的亞洲情境裡,大學生在第二語言閱讀能力上的顯著差異。

 

關鍵字: 成人外語閱讀、高等教育閱讀、閱讀策略、第二語言閱讀能力