Reading strategies employed by business english majors with different levels of exposure to specialized courses

Abstract

This study investigated the use of reading strategies by the university Business English majors in relation to their levels of exposure to specialized courses. The participants were 926 university Business English majors from 6 universities in Southwest China. A Strategy Questionnaire for Business English Reading was used to collect the data. The results revealed that the overall use of reading strategies between the students with less and more exposure to specialized courses had no significant variations At the category level, the students with less exposure to specialized courses reported significantly more use of the strategies in the POS category than the students with more exposure to specialized courses, while the students with more exposure to specialized courses reported using the strategies in the SCT sub-category of WHS category significantly more frequently than the students with less exposure to specialized courses. In terms of the individual strategy use, 18 out the 45 strategies across the questionnaire showed significant variations. Overall, the students with less exposure to specialized courses reported employing the individual strategies significantly more frequently than the students with more exposure to specialized courses.