Interdisciplinary differences among Saudi University students in REAP strategies

الملخص EN

This English language teaching and learning study explores the REAP (Reading English for Academic Purposes) strategies used by a sample of 92 university male students from four scientific colleges; Medicine, Medical Sciences, Engineering, and Applied Sciences (23 students from each discipline).

It makes use of a widely-known classification of learning strategies, which divides strategies into the categories of memory, cognitive, meta-cognitive, compensation, affective, and social strategies.

It introduces a Strategy Inventory for the particular language skill of reading.

The main aim is to compare and contrast students’ reading strategy choices and investigate if the possible differences were due to students’ different levels of reading proficiency.

Using the Chi-Square statistical test, association between students’ reading proficiency and their majors could be noticed.

Also, significant relationship between participants’ reading proficiency (and their majors accordingly) on the one hand and their reading strategy choices on the other could be found on the two categories of metacognitive and social strategies.

This research paper also shows that other relevant factors such as the amount and manner of good strategy use may well contribute to the differences between efficient and less skilled students of REAP, and hence should not be ignored.