Reading Strategies Employed By Esl/Efl Students

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2013

Students' comprehension of a text relies much on the use of appropriate reading strategies during the activity. The use of such strategies would improve students' comprehension of the text, which, in turn helps them in their academic achievement at large. This study aimed to investigate the reading strategies used by ESL learners at tertiary level. Specifically, it aimed to identify the reading strategies frequently used by the ESL high and low achievers. It also aimed to find out whether there was any significant different in the type of strategies used by each group of ESL achievers. Forty undergraduate students were randomly selected as the respondents for this study. A twenty-eight-item questionnaire, which focused on the frequency of use of pre, while, and post-reading strategies was utilised in the study. It was found that both of the ESL high and low achievers frequently used certain reading strategies to grasp the meaning of the text. The ESL high achievers were also reported to significantly use post-reading strategies more frequently as compared to the ESL low achievers who tended to use whilereading strategies more frequently. The findings suggest that the use of appropriate reading strategies should be exposed to students to help them enhance their comprehension of a reading text and make them become better readers.

Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2019

This paper systematically reviews factors related to the use of reading strategies among college-level learners of English as a foreign/second language (EFL/ESL). The author examines empirical studies published from 2000 to 2017 in order to answer two research questions: (a) What factors relate to the college-level EFL/ESL learners’ use of reading strategies? (b) How do these factors relate to college-level EFL/ESL learners’ use of reading strategies? An initial review of the literature identifies four factors related to EFL/ESL learners’ reading strategy use: English proficiency, first language (L1) literacy experience, gender, and motivation. For reasons of space, this article only reports and discusses findings on the first two factors. (1) English proficiency: High-proficiency readers use more metacognitive, support, global, and problem-solving strategies and have more metacognitive knowledge of strategy use than low-proficiency readers. They also differ from low-proficiency rea...

This paper sheds light on the reading practices of English as Second Language (ESL) Learners. It aimed at identifying some of their basic reading strategies, making a link to literacy theories, and suggesting some teaching implications that could contribute to reading literacy development. Another objective is to contribute to the argument whether or not first language (L1) reading strategies can be transferred into second language (L2) practices. The literature review showed that learners read in their L1 for different purposes and employ various strategies. Although some of them apply those strategies automatically and easily in L1, they might not be able to transfer those skills into L2 practices. In addition, ESL learners with limited L2 literacy mostly use lower level processes. The current paper also provides practical and essential insights with respect to adopting teaching methods that could effectively and efficiently meet the needs of ESL learners. Finally, it gives some suggestions for future research in the field of reading literacy of ESL learners.

Open Access Journal of Education & Language Studies , 2024

Reading is the most important skill for academic success. For such education to be effective, ESL classrooms in English institutions need to address the concerns of their students since there are many complaints about the method of teaching in certain English institutes. Additionally, many ESL students graduate from language institutes with little knowledge of the English language and continue to have trouble when they go to university. This paper investigates some of the issues affecting the efficient teaching of English as a second language in the English institutes and provides propose solutions to develop ESL pedagogical strategies, especially in reading, that would prepare the students for academic life..

Language Teaching and Educational Research (LATER), 2021

The purpose of this study is to explore foreign language reading strategy use profile of the prep-school students at a Turkish university with reference to the proficiency levels, genders, and the majors of the participants. The participants were 186 Turkish students enrolled in various levels of intensive English courses at a prep-school in a Turkish university. The present study adopted a cross sectional quantitative research design and its data was gathered by means of a foreign language reading strategy questionnaire. The analysis of the findings indicated that focal participants of this study generally use global reading strategies (x̅ 4.52), problem-solving strategies (x̅ 3.67), and support strategies (x̅ 3.16) respectively. In terms of gender, and the majors of the participants, it was found that the difference is not significant in both variables. As for the proficiency levels of the participants, it was found that low proficient students use more reading strategies than the high proficient students do in general.

The Effect of Reading Strategies Instruction on EFL Learners' Reading Performances, 2021

This study, using pretest-intervention-posttest, investigated whether instructing English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' in the use of reading strategies when they read English passages affects their English reading performances. The participants were 51 Turkish learners of English, who were at elementary level of language proficiency,based on the results of the Oxford Quick Placement Test. The whole treatment/control period lasted for 20 sessions during 10 weeks on a Reading course. The experimental group (n = 26) received instruction in reading strategies (i.e., previewing, finding the main idea, scanning, identifying examples, identifying definitions, identifying time and sequence words, reading numerical tables, making inferences, reading statistical tables, distinguishing fact from opinion) and the control group (n = 25) received instruction based on traditional teaching methods (i.e., reading, paraphrasing, translating, and answering the exercises).Data were collected via a reading proficiency test. The result of the independent samples t-test showed that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control one.

CENDEKIA: Journal of Education and Teaching

Teaching reading has been long discussed in the context of English teaching curriculum in Indonesia. The ground of English curriculum (e.g. 1984, 1994, 2004 English curriculum) lays reading as the main model of teaching English in the secondary school across classroom levels. Many English teachers have been occupied with the concepts and perceive that some concepts in teaching reading are interchangeable with reading strategies. This paper tries to give review on the reading definition, reading models, reading strategies, teaching reading, and model of teaching reading in the communicative context. The reading models present psycholinguistics model and schema theory models. The strategies of reading discuss bottom up, top-down, and interactive strategies. Strategies in teaching reading deal with reading for information, mapping, skimming and scanning. The article is closed with teaching techniques covering pre-reading, while reading, and post-reading.

1996

The first purpose of this study is to identify, categorize and analyse the EFL reading strategies utilized by Moroccan students in institutions of higher education. The second purpose is to explore the interaction of strategies' use and the readers' factors, viz. field of studies, linguistic proficiency, reading achievement, motivation, beliefs, and reading comprehension evaluation ability. Drawing implications for EFL reading instruction is an aftermath of the two first purposes. To meet these objectives, the present study is placed within an interactive cognitive schema theory, reading and EFL/ESL learning strategies research. The methodology followed utilizes a questionnaire, a cloze test, the think-aloud method, an error detection test, linguistic and reading comprehension tests to collect data. Statistical and interpretative analyses are applied to these data. The findings of the research indicate that the subjects employ a vast repertoire of strategies. These strategies are grouped in six dichotomous categories : avoidance / in depth reading, non-use of linguistic and content schemata/ activating linguistic and content schemata, decoding/ skimming and reading for gist. Nevertheless, the use of these strategies is obstructed by an over-reliance on textual cues and the limited use of background knowledge. The second set of findings demonstrates the complexity and the interdependence of strategy use and the readers' factors investigated. Beliefs, motivation and field of studies are significant in strategy use. Reading achievement, however, is not revealed to be significant, and lower linguistic proficiency is associated with avoidance rather than decoding strategies. Finally, the subjects are disclosed to lack the ability to evaluate their EFL reading comprehension. The implications of these findings are that EFL reading instruction should aim at increasing the students' awareness and self- control of strategy use, raising their motivation, self- confidence, and guiding them to think over their beliefs and attitudes towards their own learning

Understanding academic texts in English may be challenging for second language learners. It requires a certain amount of effort and appropriate use of reading strategies in order to understand the texts. In order to understand the academic texts, students have to be conscious of the reading strategies that can be used to enhance their level of reading comprehension. Therefore, it is imperative to investigate reading strategies used by students in dealing with academic texts. This study explores Universiti Teknologi MARA students' awareness level of the use of reading strategies when reading academic texts. This study utilises the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) by . A total of 157 students from the Faculty of Administrative Science and Policy Studies participated in this study. Findings showed that problem solving strategies are more prevalent among the students compared to support reading strategies and global reading strategies. The findings reveal that the students need to be more exposed to support reading strategies and global reading strategies to further enhance their level of comprehension when reading academic texts.