Abstract
This study investigated EFL learners' reading strategy by their ways of using the list of vocabulary glosses. Forty three Japanese college students participated in this study. And they were divided into two groups (upper and lower ones). They read two passages with vocabulary (monolingual) glosses and were asked to complete each questionnaire. They were also asked to check all vocabularies they referred their meanings to in the lists while reading. T-test was employed to analyze the mean of questionnaires and the mean numbers of the vocabularies referred in the lists between two groups. Results showed that on the questionnaires of two texts, the upper group performed significantly better than the lower group. And on the referred numbers of vocabularies, significant differences were found between two groups: the lower group referred the meanings of more vocabularies than the lower group. The study's conclusion was that poor readers tended not to be able to make effective use of the glosses provided for comprehension even if they take many opportunities to refer to the meaning of vocabularies.
