A Preliminary Investigation of Learner Reading Strategies when Responding to Multiple Choice Items
A Preliminary Investigation of Learner Reading Strategies when Responding to Multiple Choice Items

Summary/Abstract: This paper reports on a preliminary study examining the reading strategies adopted by undergraduate English majors when responding to multiple choice questions (MC) on a simulated test. The participants, five learners from a university in Taiwan, were asked to comment on their strategy use while responding to MC items and upon completion of the sample texts were asked to give detailed explanations of their strategy selection. The results support previous findings that when answering MC items, test-takers use strategies that are quite different from those they employ in non-testing situations. Additionally, the study shows that in the case of a high-stakes English language proficiency test (TOEIC), reading strategies are almost exclusively driven by the test (MC) format. Learners begin each text by responding to the MC test items sequentially, paying little or no regard to text type and employing limited reading strategies. Due to the small sample size, further research is necessary to confirm the findings suggested by this study.

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