Reading strategies for procedural information in EFL business writing environment: An exploratory analysis

Technical reading ability and context awareness are important preconditions to be able to understand the audience, purpose, task orientation and overall significance of any technical text. In an EFL context, such activities often might mean employing cognitive tools like skimming, headings search, etc., for text comprehension. This study undertook an exploratory analysis of how effectively readers are able to understand technical text and whether it is related to the overall score for the assignment whereby they produce a document based on the technical reading. Findings suggest that there is some correlation between different reading strategies and it has some significance for the overall score of the document production. However, data did not show any significant pattern over the weeks to suggest that the overall score is significantly influenced by a combination of reading strategies. This indicates that a properly developed formative assessment model is important to systematically capture the effects of reading strategies and task approach and also explore any possible improvement over time.