The Reading Strategies Used by Male and Female Colombian University Students

Abstract

The present paper aimed to discover whether females and males significantly varied in their utilization of reading strategies. The participants were 352 (male=117 female=235) low to intermediate Colombian university students who completed the Survey of Reading Strategies or SORS (Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2002). The results showed that males’ overall strategy use was moderate, as was their use of nearly half of their individual strategies. Females’ overall strategy use was high, as was their use of half of their strategies. Females’ overall strategy use was significantly higher than males’, as was their strategy use on two of the three SORS subscales and on eight strategies. The study provides ideas for teaching strategies and suggests areas for future research.

Keywords

• Reading
• gender
• reading strategies
• reading surveys