Analysis of ESP university students’ reading strategy awareness

Abstract

The research literature on metacognitive awareness of reading strategies indicates the need to increase our understanding of readers’ metacognitive knowledge about reading and reading strategies so that individuals develop into active, constructively responsive readers. The study presented here is intended to study the reported strategy use of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) university students, specifically students from the Faculty of Chemistry and the Technical School of Engineering at the University of Oviedo. Specifically, I analyse (1) Spanish university ESP students’ reported strategy use; and (2) differences, if any, between male and female students in their perceived use of reading strategies while reading academic materials. I conclude that there is a moderate to high overall use of reading strategies and find that students show higher reported use for problem-solving and global reading strategies. Moreover, I find that females report significantly higher frequency of strategy use and thend to use support reading strategies more than men.

Keywords

• reading ability
• reading strategies
• metacognitive awareness
• gender