Linguistic Proficiency and Strategies on Reading Performance in English

General English (L2) proficiency and reading strategies are believed to be highly
effective in successful reading performance. However, available studies rarely
investigated the combined effects of these two variables on successful reading. To
fill this gap, 78 university students were divided into four groups of different
degrees of these two variables in L2 and given a reading test in English and an
interview for assessing how much of the problems in L2 reading among the four
groups were rooted in linguistic competence and/or strategic competence. Findings
evinced that the high general proficiency level coupled with high awareness and
use of reading strategies would result in best performance and that the pattern of
answers to different components of reading question is different in different
groups. It is concluded that both of the variables should be emphasized
simultaneously for the best performance in reading comprehension.