A Study of Senior Students’ Critical Reading Competence via Analyzing their Reading Reports

Abstract

As a necessary step of thesis writing, students are required to read
the related literature concerning their chosen topics for writing research
papers. In order to understand how the students have reviewed the literature
and whether they have understood the conventions of reading and citing
literature in their thesis writing, we assigned students to write a reading report
of 1500 words. Among the 90 reading reports she has collected, the author has
randomly selected 35 copies for analysis. There are 9 pieces on the topic of
literary studies and 15 pieces for language teaching, 4 pieces on translation and
7 pieces on culture. In the 35 pieces of reading reports, it was found that only
eleven pieces have cited from previous researches and most of the citations
appear in reading reports on teaching methodology and translation. It is a pity
to notice that there were no indications of citation in reading reports of literary
works where many critics have done researches. Although some reports
contain some topics, like the use of imagery in For Whom the Bell Tolls, Gothic
element in Wuthering Heights, humanitarianism in A Tale of Two Cities, most
students focus on summarizing the main plots of literary works. As for the
types of information source, out of the total of 233, only 68 belong to the
secondary source, namely the journal articles or collected essays. Thus we may
conclude that students’ critical reading competence is far from satisfaction and
they still need to be guided as to how to read literature and how to evaluate
the usefulness of the information they have found.