57 English Teaching, Vol. 70, No. 1, Spring 2015 DOI: 10.15858/engtea.70.1.201503.57 Insights into Korean EFL Students’ Reading Motivation, Proficiency, and Strategy Use Jeongyeon Park (University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, USA) Park, Jeongyeon. (2015). Insights into Korean EFL students’ reading motivation, proficiency, and strategy use. English Teaching, 70(1), 57-74. The aim of this study is to explore the relationships between EFL learners’ reading motivation, proficiency, and strategy use. Fifty-seven students at a Korean university participated in the study. Two self-report questionnaires and a reading comprehension test were used to measure the learners’ motivation to for reading in English, reading proficiency, and reading strategy use. No significant correlation was found between reading motivation and reading strategy use or between reading motivation and reading proficiency. However, students’ performance on the test was positively related to their reported reading strategy use, showing a moderate correlation. In addition, the study found that although proficient students and less proficient students used almost the same kinds of strategies to support their reading comprehension, more proficient students used strategies more frequently than less proficient students. Key Words: second or foreign language reading, reading comprehension, reading strategies 1. INTRODUCTION As with other areas in second language acquisition (SLA), second language (L2) reading research has mostly relied on first language (L1) research for its theoretical background and models. Researchers, however, have gradually paid increasing attention specifically to L2 reading, as the process of L2 reading is particularly complex and multifaceted. For example, as opposed to L1 readers, L2 readers are already literate in their L1, and these L1 literacy skills can influence their L2 reading process by either assisting or hindering it (Hudson, 2007). In addition, their purposes in learning L2 reading skills are likely to be more diverse, as they derive from individual learners’ various goals and motivations. Many
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57
English Teaching, Vol. 70, No. 1, Spring 2015
DOI: 10.15858/engtea.70.1.201503.57
Insights into Korean EFL Students’ Reading Motivation, Proficiency, and Strategy Use
Jeongyeon Park
(University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, USA)
Park, Jeongyeon. (2015). Insights into Korean EFL students’ reading
motivation, proficiency, and strategy use. English Teaching, 70(1), 57-74.
The aim of this study is to explore the relationships between EFL learners’ reading
motivation, proficiency, and strategy use. Fifty-seven students at a Korean
university participated in the study. Two self-report questionnaires and a reading
comprehension test were used to measure the learners’ motivation to for reading in
English, reading proficiency, and reading strategy use. No significant correlation
was found between reading motivation and reading strategy use or between reading
motivation and reading proficiency. However, students’ performance on the test was
positively related to their reported reading strategy use, showing a moderate
correlation. In addition, the study found that although proficient students and less
proficient students used almost the same kinds of strategies to support their reading
comprehension, more proficient students used strategies more frequently than less
proficient students.
Key Words: second or foreign language reading, reading comprehension, reading
strategies
1. INTRODUCTION
As with other areas in second language acquisition (SLA), second language (L2) reading
research has mostly relied on first language (L1) research for its theoretical background
and models. Researchers, however, have gradually paid increasing attention specifically to
L2 reading, as the process of L2 reading is particularly complex and multifaceted. For
example, as opposed to L1 readers, L2 readers are already literate in their L1, and these L1
literacy skills can influence their L2 reading process by either assisting or hindering it
(Hudson, 2007). In addition, their purposes in learning L2 reading skills are likely to be
more diverse, as they derive from individual learners’ various goals and motivations. Many
58 Jeongyeon Park
researchers also have looked into the complex processes of L2 reading with regard to
developing useful instructional methods to assist learners, such as reading strategy training
(e.g., skimming, scanning).
In light of this, the primary purpose of the present study was set to explore how these
aforementioned factors, such as individual learners’ reading motivations, goals, and
strategy use, are associated with L2 reading, with the aim of providing some insight into
their relationship. More specifically, the study investigated to what extent
multidimensional reading motivation and efficient strategy use affect the reading
performance of EFL Korean students. In the following sections, the paper first reviews
studies on L2 or EFL reading, specifically those that focus on the relationships between L2
reading motivation, reading comprehension proficiency, and reading strategy use. Next,
the design of the present study, including its participants, materials, and procedures, is
described. The paper then presents a discussion of the findings, and it concludes with a
discussion of the study’s pedagogical implications.
2. BACKGROUND OF RESEARCH
2.1. Reading Motivation
Second language motivation has been given considerable attention since Gardner and
Lambert (1959) initiated discussion of its essential role in L2 acquisition; a good body of
work has followed, probing the role of motivation as one of the most influential individual
difference variables. However, most motivation studies have sought to establish a
relationship with language learning in general or have been more concerned with speaking,
drawing on Gardner’s socio-educational model, rather than reading. In response to this
state of affairs, Wigfield (1997) asserted the importance of a “domain-specific approach”
(p. 60), arguing that in order to explore the multidimensionality of reading motivation, it
should be distinguished from general motivation. Therefore, Wigfield and Guthrie (1997)
attempted to conceptualize the construct of motivation for reading, drawing on motivation
theories in educational psychology. They defined three categories of reading motivation,1
which led to the development of the Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ). With
the MRQ, a series of studies (Baker & Wigfield, 1999; Guthrie, Wigfield, Barbosa,
1 Eleven dimensions comprise the three categories of reading: (a) competence and efficacy beliefs: reading efficacy, reading challenge, and reading work avoidance; (b) achievement value and goals: reading curiosity, reading involvement, importance of reading, competition in reading, reading recognition, and reading for grades; and (c) social aspects of reading: social reasons for reading and reading compliance.
Insights into Korean EFL Students’ Reading Motivation, Proficiency, and Strategy Use 59
Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997) has attempted to probe multiple aspects of L1 reading
motivation. However, to this author’s knowledge, only Mori (2002), with native Japanese-
speaking participants, has attempted to see what constitutes EFL students’ English reading
motivation. Although Mori did not find motivational aspects clustered into the constructs
that were proposed by Wigfield and Guthrie, the study did support the dynamic construct
of motivation. Therefore, building on these previous studies, and with the goal of
expanding the research on reading motivation, the present study explores native Korean-
speaking EFL students’ motivation for reading in English by looking specifically into their
intrinsic motivation and their extrinsic motivation.
2.2. Reading Motivation and Strategy Use
Along with the burgeoning of interest in motivation, some researchers have extended
attention to the relationship between motivation and cognition. A series of studies has
aimed specifically at finding links between motivation and cognitive strategy use in
language learning. For L1 reading, some studies have explored the relationship between
reading motivation and reading strategy use and found positive correlations between them
(e.g., Guthrie et al., 20002, 2004; Lau & Chan, 2003). For example, Lau and Chan (2003)
divided 7th graders in China into “poor readers” and “good readers” and examined how
their reading strategy use was related to their reading motivation. Their findings revealed
that poor readers applied fewer reading strategies to comprehend a Chinese text and used
only simple strategies, such as “deleting unimportant sentences,” on a test. In addition, the
students’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivations showed a positive correlation with their
reading comprehension. Notably, intrinsic motivation was the most salient difference
between the two groups.
MacIntyre and Noels (1996) explored how specific motivational factors are correlated
with L2 learners’ language learning strategies. The authors found four categories of factors
(integrativeness, attitudes toward the language situation, language anxiety, and motivation)
that correlated with three types of strategies (cognitive, metacognitive, and social
strategies). In addition, students who were more highly motivated used strategies more
often, showing more knowledge about strategies. The results of this study are in line with
Oxford and Nyikos’s (1989) large-scale study, which found that degree of motivation most
2 Guthrie et al. (2000) investigated whether classroom intervention can affect 3rd and 5th graders’
intrinsic reading motivation under two different instructional methods: traditional instruction and Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI), “an instructional program for elementary school children that merges reading strategy instruction, science instruction, and a set of motivational practices designed to enhance children’s intrinsic reading motivation” (Guthrie et al., 2004, p. 288).
60 Jeongyeon Park
affects students’ choice of language learning strategies. The students who expressed a high
degree of motivation for learning languages used more strategies than those who expressed
a lower degree of motivation.
While one study, conducted by Vandergrift (2005), found that the reported use of L2
listening strategies had moderate or strong correlations with either extrinsic or intrinsic
motivation, there is a paucity of L2 reading research on motivation. Links between reading
motivation and strategy use have remained largely under-researched. Therefore, another
aim of the current study is to fill a gap in the L2 reading literature by investigating the
relationship between motivation and strategy use.
2.3. Reading Strategy Use and Proficiency
While little attention has been paid to the role of motivation in the use of L2 reading
strategies, many studies have examined the relationship between reading proficiency and
strategy use. Reading research in general has divided reading strategies into two
categories: cognitive and metacognitive. According to Grabe (2009):
Cognitive strategies have commonly been described as strategies that a reader is trained
to use, such as guessing from context, noting discourse organization, recognizing a
transition phrase, skipping a word, identifying a known word part, forming a question
about an author, or identifying a main idea. Metacognitive strategies have been
described as strategies that require an explicit awareness of reading itself and that most
strongly support the goals of reading. (p. 223)
Applying metacognitive strategies thus requires readers’ ability to monitor their
comprehension during reading and to adjust the specific cognitive strategies they are using.
Metacognitive ability seems to play an important role in individual learners’ on-going
decision-making, which, in turn, may lead to better understanding of the text by remedying
comprehension failures. Although Grabe (2009) describes their differences, he also argues
that it is not easy to make a clear-cut dichotomous distinction between cognitive and
metacognitive strategies. This is in part due to the fact that different studies have defined
them in various ways (Hudson, 2007) or made less of a distinction between them
(Hedgcock & Ferris, 2009). L2 reading research in general, however, seems to support the
claim that both cognitive and metacognitive strategies help readers better comprehend
reading texts.
A good number of studies have demonstrated how strategic reading takes place in L1
and L2 reading across different reading proficiency levels. Research on L1 reading has
shown that less proficient readers tend not to be very adept at handling reading strategies
Insights into Korean EFL Students’ Reading Motivation, Proficiency, and Strategy Use 61
(e.g., Baker & Brown, 1984; Block, 1992), and L2 research has found similar results,
indicating that L2 students’ reading strategy use is correlated with their reading
performance (see Koda, 2005 for more information).
Block (1992) found that proficient nonnative speakers used almost as many
comprehension monitoring processes as proficient native speakers, and Sheorey and
Mokhtari’s (2001) study found that both English native speakers and EFL students who
rated themselves as having high reading ability used more metacognitive and cognitive
strategies. The EFL students also showed a tendency to use more supportive strategies,
such as consulting a dictionary, taking notes, and underlining texts. This finding is in line
with some previous studies on L2 reading (Carrell, 1989; Young & Oxford, 1997) that
showed that more proficient readers are likely to use global strategies, whereas less
proficient students use more local strategies.
More recently, Phakiti’s (2003) large-scale study investigated Thai EFL students’
cognitive and metacognitive strategy use on a reading achievement test by looking into the
participants’ reported use of both kinds of reading strategies and their scores on the test. He
found that both cognitive and metacognitive strategies were positively related to the
students’ performance on the test (r = .391 and .469, respectively). Phakiti also interviewed
four successful and four unsuccessful students; the qualitative data suggested that the use
of the different kinds of strategies differed between the two groups of interviewees. The
students who were more successful on the test reported the use of more metacognitive
strategies.
Similarly, in support of the efficacy of strategy instruction, Ikeda and Takeuchi (2006)
investigated whether any differences in the process of learning reading strategies existed
between two proficiency levels of Japanese EFL learners. In addition to strategy
instruction, students were required to make their own portfolio about their strategy learning
and to record what kinds of strategies they had used. An analysis of their portfolio
descriptions revealed that the more proficient group tended to use more strategies than
their counterparts in the lower proficiency group. Another intriguing finding was that the
higher proficiency group not only understood the purpose of each strategy use but also had
a better sense of which strategy could be efficiently used in which condition. As previous
research has found a general trend that the more fluent readers use various kinds of reading
strategies in more efficient ways than the less fluent readers, the present study aims to
provide some insight on this relationship.
62 Jeongyeon Park
3. RESEARCH DESIGN
3.1. The Study
The primary purpose of this study was to investigate whether any relationship exists
between English reading motivation, proficiency, and strategy use. As discussed above,
while little is known about the relationship between reading motivation and proficiency,
some research has shown positive relationships between motivation and strategy use (e.g.,
Lau & Chan, 2003). Several earlier studies (e.g., Ikeda & Takeuchi, 2006; Sheorey &
Mokhtari, 2001) have also shown specifically that the ability to use reading strategies is
one of the salient features differentiating readers in terms of proficiency. In other words,
the more proficient readers in these studies were able to utilize more reading strategies
effectively and appropriately, which may have led to their better comprehension of reading
texts.
3.2. Research Questions
Taking the findings of previous research into consideration, this study explored the
possibility of positive synergistic effects between the three factors of reading motivation,
proficiency, and strategy, asking three research questions:
1. What is the relationship between reading motivation and reading proficiency?
2. What is the relationship between reading motivation and reading strategy use?
3. What is the relationship between reading strategy use and reading proficiency?
3.3. Subjects
Fifty-seven Korean undergraduate students enrolled in an English course at a Korean
university voluntarily participated in the study. The primary goal of the course was to help
students improve their reading fluency as well as general reading skills. The participants
were 32 male and 25 female students, ranging in age from 19 to 27 years old, with a mean
age of 22.3 years. Their academic majors were diverse, but mainly in the social sciences.
Most of the students had started learning English formally in the 3rd grade, and thus,
although the length of time varied somewhat due to age differences, they had all studied it
for several years. Therefore, their overall English proficiency was expected to be at least at
or around the intermediate level; however, in order to measure the participants’ reading
proficiency at the time of data collection, a reading comprehension test was administered.
Insights into Korean EFL Students’ Reading Motivation, Proficiency, and Strategy Use 63
3.4. Materials
A background information form was first developed to obtain the participants’
biographical data, including their age, gender, and English language learning and reading
experiences. A reading comprehension test was then prepared to assess the participants’
reading comprehension ability. The academic texts and comprehension questions were
adapted from Preparation for the TOEFL: Test of English as a Foreign Language
(Sullivan & Zhong, 1994). The test consisted of five academic reading texts, each
approximately 200 to 350 words in length, and each was followed by five multiple-choice
comprehension questions. The 25 questions were designed to measure participants’ ability
to understand main ideas, make inferences, guess meanings of difficult words, and identify
authors’ voices in the text. In order to minimize the effects of confounding variables, the
topics of the reading texts were selected with caution. As topic familiarity, or background
knowledge, not only affects students’ reading comprehension (Chen & Donin, 1997;
Carrell & Wise, 1998; Lee, 2007; McNeil, 2011) but also influences male and female
students differently (Bugel & Buunk, 1996; Brantmeier, 2003), general subjects and
gender-neutral topics were selected. Third, two questionnaires were utilized to explore
English reading motivation and English reading strategy use.
The English Reading Motivation Questionnaire was adapted from Noels, Pelletier,
Clément, and Vallerand’s (2000) LLOS-IEA (Language Learning Orientations Scale—
Intrinsic Motivation, Extrinsic Motivation, and Amotivation Subscales). Noels et al.’s
original questionnaire was developed based on one of the most influential motivation
theories in educational psychology: Deci and Ryan’s (1985) self-determination theory.
Deci and Ryan (1985) claimed that intrinsic and extrinsic motives best explain the
motivational orientations of individuals’ self-determined performance. Drawing on their
theory, the present study expected to find that those who are either intrinsically or
extrinsically motivated use more reading strategies to achieve their reading comprehension
goals. In addition to intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, amotivation, which refers to the
state of being “neither intrinsically nor extrinsically motivated” (Vallerand et al., 1992, p.
1007), was also included. For the purpose of this study, the LLOS-IEA was modified to
make it applicable to the domain of reading. For instance, an item for intrinsic motivation,
“For the satisfied feeling I get in finding out new things” was changed to “For the satisfied
feeling I get in learning new information by reading in English.” The English Reading
Motivation Questionnaire consisted of a total of 21 items to be rated on a seven-point
Likert scale that ranged from 1 = “completely disagree” to 7 = “completely agree” (See
Appendix A). The reliability of the questionnaire was attested with a Cronbach’s alpha
of .85.
The English Reading Strategy Questionnaire was adapted from Mokhtari and Reichard’s
64 Jeongyeon Park
(2002) Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS). The SORS, composed of 30 questions, was
originally intended to measure ESL students’ perceived use of reading strategies for
academic reading texts. To increase the feasibility of implementing the survey in the
current study, some revisions were necessary. For example, some of the questionnaire
items that included technical terms related to reading strategies were deleted or modified
by rewording. Also, the questionnaire included items on various types of strategy, from
global (e.g., “I used my background knowledge to help me understand what I read”) to
more local, specific types (e.g., “I underlined or circled information to help me remember
it”). As a result, a total of 18 statements on a five-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 = “I
never or almost never did this” to 5 = “I always or almost always did this,” were included
in the second questionnaire (See Appendix B). Relatively good internal consistency was
achieved (Cronbach’s alpha = .87).
3.5. Procedure
A packet including a background information form, a reading test, and the two
questionnaires (the English Reading Motivation and English Reading Strategy
Questionnaires) was distributed to the individual participants. The first page of the packet
explained the purpose and the procedure of the study in Korean to ensure that all
participants could clearly understand the instructions. All of the materials except the
questions in the reading test were also provided in Korean to avoid any possible confusion.
The participants were given approximately 60 minutes to finish the entire reading packet
under the supervision of the researcher. They were directed to complete the packet as it
was ordered: the background survey, the English Reading Motivation Questionnaire, the
reading comprehension test, and the English Reading Strategy Questionnaire.
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The results of the statistical analysis are shown in Table 1 below. The mean of the
English Reading Motivation Questionnaire is 92.74, with a minimum of 60 and a
maximum of 129. Considering the possible score range on the questionnaire (from 21 to
147), the students seem to have fairly high English reading motivation in general. The
mean for the English Reading Strategy Questionnaire is 52.82, ranging from 21 to 80. As
for the reading test, the students scored 16.04 out of 25 on average, with a minimum of 9
and a maximum of 21. This indicates that students’ reading proficiency levels were diverse
at the time of data collection.
Insights into Korean EFL Students’ Reading Motivation, Proficiency, and Strategy Use 65
4.1. Relationship Between Motivation and Proficiency
The students’ reading motivation questionnaires were analyzed before any possible
correlations were examined. Both extrinsic (e.g., items 1, 2, 7, 8, 9) and intrinsic
motivation (e.g., items 3, 4, 5, 10, 11) seemed to play crucial roles in driving the students
to learn to read in English, with similar high scores across all survey items (M = 4.81 and
4.68, respectively).
TABLE 1
Descriptive Statistics: Reading Motivation, Reading Strategy, and Reading Test
Reading Motivation Reading Strategy Reading Test
Mean 92.74 52.82 16.04 Median 90.00 54.00 16.00 Mode 77.00 54.00a 18.00 Std. deviation 17.12 11.95 3.33 Skewness 0.17 -0.26 -0.32 Kurtosis -0.86 0.32 -0.93 Range 69.00 59.00 12.00 Minimum 60.00 21.00 9.00 Maximum 129.00 80.00 21.00
Note. N = 57; a Multiple modes exist.
This may indicate that the students view learning to read in English as an enjoyable
experience (i.e., intrinsic motivation), but they are also under pressure from outside factors
(i.e., extrinsic motivation). Moreover, and surprisingly, their overall extrinsic motivation is
slightly higher than their overall intrinsic motivation. In particular, two survey questions
(item 1 and13) related to extrinsic motivation for learning to read in English showed the
highest mean scores (5.83 and 5.12, respectively). Considering the circumstances under
which Korean students study English, a desire to achieve high English proficiency driven
by external factors appears reasonable. Indeed, English ability plays a critical role in both
college and job-hunting in Korea these days; therefore, achieving a high score on
standardized English tests (e.g., TOEFL, TOEIC) is very important. Students undoubtedly
feel pressured to learn to read in English in order to survive in the job market as well as in
academia. In this sense, it is unsurprising that their external motives have been deeply
internalized, outperforming intrinsic motives, and becoming strong enough to drive them
to study English harder. The results of the motivation survey indicate that individual
Korean students’ reading motivations are diverse. These findings thus seem to support the
claim that individual students have varying degrees of motivation for learning to read in
English.
The analysis then looked for possible relationships between Korean EFL learners’
reading motivation and reading proficiency measured through the comprehension test.
66 Jeongyeon Park
TABLE 2
Correlations Between Reading Test Scores and Three Types of Reading Motivation