Unpacking Literary Reading in a Foreign Language: Interactions Between Motivation, Strategies, and Proficiency

Literature plays a central role in many L2 curricula around the world, offering rich linguistic input, fostering interpretive and aesthetic engagement, and supporting deeper cultural and critical understanding. This study investigated how reading motivation, self-reported use of reading strategies, tolerance of ambiguity, attitudes toward literature, and overall English proficiency jointly related to upper-secondary school learners’ literary competence in an EFL context. A sample of 264 Norwegian VG1 students completed a literary assessment based on a short story and a battery of affective, cognitive, and experiential measures. Using a moderated mediation framework, the data analysis revealed that reading motivation exerted a positive direct effect on participants’ assessment scores (i.e., literary competence, measured as a performance outcome). However, reading motivation was negatively associated with self-reported reading strategy use, producing a small suppressor effect, and the magnitude of both pathways depended on overall proficiency: the positive direct effect weakened at higher proficiency, while the negative indirect effect intensified. Tolerance of ambiguity, literary attitudes, and extramural literary engagement also contributed uniquely to literary competence. These findings suggest a developmental shift from conscious, effortful reading strategy use toward more tacit processing with respect to specifically literary reading as proficiency increases, underscoring the need for differentiated pedagogical approaches.