an investigation into reading comprehension strategies reported by english major freshmen at nong lam university

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY

AN INVESTIGATION
INTO READING COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES
REPORTED BY ENGLISH MAJOR FRESHMEN
AT NONG LAM UNIVERSITY

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS (TESOL)
By
NGUYEN MINH TRANG
Supervised by
Dr. BUI THI THUC QUYEN

HO CHI MINH CITY, 2017


i

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I declare this thesis entitled “AN INVESTIGATION INTO READING
COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES REPORTED BY ENGLISH MAJOR
FRESHMEN AT NONG LAM UNIVERSITY” is the result of my own work
except as cited in the reference.

The thesis has not been accepted for any degree and it is not currently submitted in
candidature of any other degree.

Ho Chi Minh City, 2017

Nguyen Minh Trang


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my
supervisor, Dr. Bui Thi Thuc Quyen. I am very grateful for her help, suggestions,
advice, and sympathies. Without her patience and valuable help, I could have not
finished this thesis on schedule.
I gratefully acknowledge to all teachers and students from Faculty of Foreign
Language and Pedagogy at Nong Lam University who facilitated my data
collection, so I could successfully collect the data.
Finally, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to my parents for their
great support and help. Without their encouragement and devotion, I would have
not been able to complete the thesis.


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ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to investigate university students’ perceived use
of strategies to read academic materials in English as Foreign Language (EFL)
context across different levels of proficiency. Besides, it was designed to analyze
whether the use of reading strategies among EFL first-year student differed
according to their gender and different lengths of English learning. In order to fulfill
the research aims, both quantitative method and qualitative method were
implemented for data collection. Quantitative data were collected from the results of

a reading comprehension test and the questionnaire administered to 120 freshmen
majoring in English at Nong Lam University. Semi-structured interviews were
conducted with 12 students selected from the participants to collect qualitative data.
While the data from the reading test and the questionnaire were gathered and
analyzed by SPSS statistical package version 22, the semi-structured interview data
were recorded, transcribed and then analyzed by the method of content analysis.
The results indicated that the participants reported to employ strategies on
reading at medium level of frequency and there was not any significant correlation
between students’ awareness of strategies and their reading scores. However, some
differences in utilizing reading strategies between successful and unsuccessful
readers were revealed in this study. Furthermore, this study indicated that the
students’ reading strategy use was not significantly affected by their gender or
length of learning English. These findings have offered detailed insight into issues
related to freshmen’s reading comprehension and reading strategy use at Nong Lam
University. They are hoped to be helpful for teachers and learners of EFL at this
university and other similar contexts. Finally, based on the limitations of this study,
directions are provided for future research.


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TABLE OF CONTENTS
STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ......................................................................... i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ....................................................................................... ii
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................. iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................ iv
LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................. vii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS............................................................................... viii
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................1
1.1 Problem statement .................................................................................................1

1.2 Research aims ........................................................................................................2
1.3 Research questions ................................................................................................2
1.4 Research significance ............................................................................................3
1.5 Working definition of key terms ...........................................................................3
1.6 Thesis structure .....................................................................................................4
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................6
2.1 Reading comprehension in EFL context ...............................................................6
2.2 EFL reading strategies...........................................................................................8
2.3 Classification of reading strategies in EFL context ............................................10
2.4 Reading strategies for better reading comprehension performance ....................13
2.5 Successful and less successful EFL readers ........................................................15
2.6 Previous related studies .......................................................................................17
2.6.1 Studies on students’ frequency use of reading strategies in EFL context .17
2.6.2 Studies on reading strategy use between successful and unsuccessful
readers.................................................................................................................19
2.6.3 Studies on reading strategy use between male and female students .........22
2.6.4 Studies on the relationship between reading strategy use and length of
English learning ..................................................................................................23


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2.7 Chapter summary ................................................................................................24
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY .........................................................................25
3.1 Research design ...................................................................................................25
3.2 Research questions ..............................................................................................25
3.3 Research context .................................................................................................26
3.4 Participants ..........................................................................................................26
3.5 The reading course ..............................................................................................27
3.6 Instruments ..........................................................................................................27

3.6.1 The reading test .........................................................................................28
3.6.2 The Questionnaire .....................................................................................29
3.6.3 Pilot of the study........................................................................................31
3.6.4 Reliability and validity of the questionnaire .............................................32
3.6.5 The semi-structured interviews .................................................................32
3.7 Data collection procedures ..................................................................................34
3.8 Data analysis .......................................................................................................35
3.8.1 Questionnaire data .....................................................................................36
3.8.2 Interview data ............................................................................................37
3.9 Chapter summary ................................................................................................37
CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ....................................................38
4.1 Test of reliability .................................................................................................38
4.2 Results of students’ questionnaire .......................................................................39
4.2.1 Students’ frequency of use of reading strategies .......................................40
4.2.2 Relationship between reading strategy awareness and reading competence
............................................................................................................................45
4.2.3 Relationship between perceived use of reading strategies and gender .....49
4.2.4 Relationship between reading strategy awareness and length of learning
English ................................................................................................................51
4.3 Findings of students’ interviews .........................................................................55
4.4 Discussion of findings .........................................................................................59


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4.5 Chapter summary ................................................................................................64
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS ......................................65
5.1 Summary of major findings ................................................................................65
5.2 Implications .........................................................................................................67
5.3 Limitations and recommendations ......................................................................68

5.4 Chapter summary ................................................................................................69
REFERENCES ........................................................................................................70
APPENDIX A ..........................................................................................................79
APPENDIX B ..........................................................................................................91
APPENDIX C ..........................................................................................................95
APPENDIX D ..........................................................................................................99
APPENDIX E ........................................................................................................100
APPENDIX F .........................................................................................................101


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LIST OF TABLES
Table 4.1 Cronbach’s Alpha of the questionnaire ...........................................39
Table 4.2 Five-point Likert scale .....................................................................39
Table 4.3 Three levels of strategy usage .......................................................... 40
Table 4.4 Means of Reported Strategy Used ...................................................40
Table 4.5 Descriptive Statistics of EFL students’ perceived use of reading strategies
.......................................................................................................................... 41
Table 4.6 Preferences of Reading Strategy by the participants ....................... 42
Table 4.7 Descriptive statistics of the reading comprehension test score........45
Table 4.8 Descriptive statistics for reading strategies of three groups ...........46
Table 4.9 One-way ANOVA of overall reading strategy use among three groups
.......................................................................................................................... 46
Table 4.10 Strategies used by successful and unsuccessful readers ................47
Table 4.11 Descriptive statistics for reading strategy use according to gender
.......................................................................................................................... 50
Table 4.12 Independent sample t-test for reading strategy used by gender .....50
Table 4.13 Descriptive Statistic of participants’ length of learning English ...51
Table 4.14 Correlation between reading strategy awareness and length of English

learning .............................................................................................................52
Table 4.15 Profile of the participants ............................................................... 55
Table 4.16 Strategies used to tackling reading problems.................................57


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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ANOVA

Analysis of Variances

d

Effect size of independent t-test

EFL

English as a Foreign Language

M

Mean value

N

Number of participants

p

p-value

r

Pearson correlation

SPSS

Statistical Package for Social Sciences

Sig.

Significance

Std.

Standard


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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
This chapter is designed to offer an introduction including the statement of
problems, research aims, research significance, and working definition of key terms
of this study. Finally, the structure of the thesis is provided in this chapter.
1.1 Problem statement
Reading is considered to be the primary skill in learning English as Foreign
Language (EFL), and it can be explained as a process in which learners use their
experience, knowledge and attitude to comprehend the text (Adiguzel & Gurses,

2013). It is widely known that reading can improve other skills such as writing or
speaking, and it also enhances the process to acquire information from several
sources (Yilmaz, 2012). Lee (2012) considers English reading as “a fundamental
form of language inputs, and a psycholinguistic process for active reconstruction of
a message from written language” (p. 310). Although most of EFL learners do not
have to speak English in their daily lives, they need to read a great deal of materials
written in English so as to obtain “the wealth of information” (Eskey, 2005, cited in
Zhou, 2011, p.46). In Vietnam, especially in universities, every English major
student has to take at least a course on reading comprehension as one of the
compulsory subjects. Moreover, reading comprehension is an essential part in
almost every EFL exam such as National High School Examination, IELTS
(International English Language Testing System), TOEFL (Test of English as a
Foreign Language), and so forth.
On the other hand, comprehending a reading text is not an easy task,
especially in foreign language. Many researchers assert that learners of EFL are “illequipped to handle the academic reading demands” (Maasum & Maarof, 2012, p.
1250). Pang (2008) points out that EFL learners’ proficiency in reading is
influenced by many factors, such as word recognition, familiarity with the reading
topics or structure, and so forth. Additionally, many research studies conducted


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have proved that learners who are successful in reading comprehension are the ones
who “are active and use a variety of strategies as they read (Keene & Zimmermann,
1997, cited in Scharlach, 2008). Cantrell and Carter (2009; cited in Raftari, Seyyedi
& Ismail, 2012) also agree that successful reading associates most with
“understanding about the kinds of reading strategies”. Hence, reading strategies and
use of these strategies also play a very important role in processing the reading text
(Pang, 2008). However, “there could be some differences in frequency and choices
of the strategies among countries” (Kasimi, 2012, p. 170), and the strategies that are

frequently employed and the differences in the way successful readers and less
successful readers apply have not been extensively researched in the context of
Vietnam. In addition, at Nong Lam University, although every first year student of
English Department reported that they had been taught the awareness of strategies
on reading comprehension in English, most of them admitted that they were not
able to monitor these strategies or employ the most suitable ones when encountering
difficulties in reading. From the two concerns above, the current study is conducted
to investigate the reading strategies employed among first year students at Nong
Lam University and how successful and less successful readers have applied such
strategies when perform the tasks of reading academic materials in English.
1.2 Research aims
This research aims to investigate English major first-year students’ reading
strategy use and the differences between successful and less successful readers’ use
of such strategies in EFL context. Besides, how students’ gender and lengths of
learning English affect their perceived use of strategies while reading academic
material is also taken into consideration.
1.3 Research questions
In order to achieve these aims mentioned above, the current study addresses
the following research questions:


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1) What is the frequency of use of reading strategies reported by English
major freshmen at Nong Lam University?
2) What are the differences in the employment of reading strategies of
successful and unsuccessful readers? To what extent do the participants’ gender and
the lengths of time devoted to their English learning affect their reading strategy
use?
1.4 Research significance

This study gives an in-depth understanding of first-year students’ use of
strategies on reading at Nong Lam University. It first helps the teachers of EFL
reading know which strategies freshmen tend to utilize in their reading process.
Secondly, from this finding, teachers can examine how effectively the students have
employed these strategies when comprehending a reading text in English. Thirdly,
the students are provided with the knowledge as well as skills in employing reading
strategies successfully. Finally, the current study is hoped to be a reference for those
who are concerned about EFL reading comprehension and reading strategies at
universities in Vietnam.
1.5 Working definition of key terms
Key terms of this study were defined as follows:
Academic reading: is explained as “purposeful and critical reading of a range
of lengthy academic texts for completing the study of specific major subject areas”
(Sengupta, 2002, cited in Hoang, 2016, p. 8). In the current study, academic reading
refers to reading academic or school-related materials.
English as a Foreign Language (EFL): English is considered a foreign
language when it is “for learners in whose community English is not the usual
language of communication” (Thornbury, 2006, p. 74). He also states that “the
distinction between a foreign language and a second language is not always clear in


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practice” (p. 74). In the current study, EFL refers to English that students learn as an
academic subject, and they may not use to it communicate in their daily life.
EFL context: In this study it refers to the situation in which English is used as
a foreign language.
Materials: Thornbury (2006) states that “materials include anything that is
used to support the learning process” (p. 127), such as “coursebooks, workbooksvisual aids, charts, board games, Cuisenaire rods, audio and video materials, as well
as the software that is run by computers, data projectors and interactive

whiteboards” (p. 127). In this study, materials refer to the printed or written
documents.
Reading comprehension: It is defined as “an activity aimed to understand the
messages of a particular text” (Williams, 1998, cited in Cahyono & Widiati, 2006,
p. 37). In the current study, reading comprehension refers to the ability to fully
understand the reading materials.
Reading strategies: Cohen (1990, cited in Zare & Othman, 2013, p. 188)
defines reading strategies as “mental processes that readers consciously select to use
to complete reading tasks successfully”. In this study, reading strategies refer to
actions or techniques the students select to overcome reading comprehension
difficulties and fulfill the reading tasks.
The students: In the current study, this term refers to first-year students
majoring in English at Nong Lam University participated in the current study.
1.6 Thesis structure
This thesis is comprised of five chapters.
Chapter 1 offers an introduction of the study including the statement of
problem, the research aims, research questions, research significance, working
definition of key terms and the structure of this thesis.


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Chapter 2 provides a review on theoretical and empirical literature beginning
with the concept of reading comprehension and its feature. A summary of related
previous studies will be presented at the last section of this chapter
Chapter 3 describes the context, the participants, and the main instruments,
presents the procedure and the methods to collect and analyze data from the main
instruments of this study.
Chapter 4 presents the results from data analysis of the questionnaire and the
findings from semi-structured interviews, a discussion on the results is subsequently

provided in this chapter.
Chapter 5 summarizes the major findings in chapter 4, addresses theoretical
and practical implications, demonstrates limitations of the study, and gives future
research direction.


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CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter aims to review theories of reading comprehension, reading
strategies and other issues relating to them in EFL context. It also provides a
summary of previous studies conducted with university students on their use of
reading strategies when reading academic materials in English.
2.1 Reading comprehension in EFL context
A great number of researchers insist on the important role of reading to master
a foreign language. K. T-C. Chen and S. C-L. Chen (2015) indicate that reading is
an essential part in a foreign language learning because reading is one of the “means
of data collection” (Mirzapour & Mozaheb, 2015, p. 389) and “a means of
communicating information between the writer and the reader” (Budiharso, 2014, p.
190). Through reading activities and reading materials, the learners learn about a
variety of vocabulary items as well as grammar points (Naidu et al., 2013).
Therefore, they can “receive valuable linguistic input to build up language
proficiency” (Erten & Razi, 2003; cited in Kasimi, 2012, p. 160). Moreover, as
Budiharso (2014) states, reading can be seen as “a kind of dialogue between the
reader and the text” (p. 191) and from the written text, the reader can understand
what the writer wants to express.
Reading is more than a process of looking at or saying the printed or written
words and symbols. Reading has been considered as “a complex cognitive activity
that is crucial for adequate functioning and for obtaining information in current

society and requires an integration of memory and meaning construction” (Alfassi,
2004, cited in Zare & Othman, 2013, p. 187). According to Budiharso (2014),
reading can be understood as a process of discovering and understanding the
meaning of what the writer has represented on the printed material. Zare and
Othman (2013) also define reading as “an active process in which readers shift
between sources of information, elaborate meaning and strategies, monitor their


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comprehension, and use the social context to reflect their response” (p. 187).
Moreover, many researchers agree that reading is a process that requires the readers
to operate or interact with the written text in order to comprehend the texts and
obtain the implied idea or the information from the author (Raftari et al., 2012;
Karbalaei & Golshan, 2010). It can be concluded that reading is a process of both
understanding and interacting with the written language in order to follow the ideas
from the writer (Budiharso, 2014).
Therefore, readers are expected to participate in the complex cognitive activity
which requires many skills and processes so as to achieve the main goal for reading
that is comprehension (Kazemi et al., 2013). Comprehension is defined as “the
ability to go beyond the words, to understand the ideas in a text and the
relationships that exist between those ideas” (Kazemi et al., 2013, p. 2333). In other
words, comprehension is a process of “making a sense out of text” (McNell, 1992;
cited in Budiharso, 2014, p. 191) and “understanding the representation” (Carnine et
al., 1990; cited in Budiharso, 2014, p. 191). From the definition of reading and
comprehension, reading comprehension can be defined as “a process where readers
interact with the texts to construct meaning” (Hoang, 2016, p. 9) and it is considered
not only as the level of understanding a text or a message (Rayner et al., 2001) but
also “the result of the interaction among the reader, the text and the context in
which reading takes place” (Pei, 2014, p. 1147).

Many researchers have so far expressed different views on factors that
contribute to reading comprehension. Hou (2013) points out the four factors of
reader’s decoding ability, reader’s social and cultural background, the text’s level of
readability, teachers’ instruction, and classroom environment. Meanwhile, Shang
(2015) takes several factors that enhance reading comprehension into consideration
which are “vocabulary, prior/background knowledge, textual clues, intrinsic
motivation or interest, as well as strategic behaviours for monitoring” (p. 294). Last
but not least, Hoang (2016), after extensively investigating previous studies, lists a
variety of factors including reader’s competence of foreign language grammar,


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sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and strategy use (Scarcella & Oxford, 1992,
cited in Hoang, 2016); additionally, the factors of reader’s purpose or motivation,
vocabulary, knowledge of text types, concentration while reading are also added to
the list. Hoang (2016) also stresses that although there are different factors that
influence reading comprehension, the utilization of strategy is believed to play a
crucial role in the reading process.
To sum up, reading is a crucial skill that every EFL learner has to master and
reading comprehension is an essential goal for them to achieve in order to response
correctly to the written texts, interact with the author through the texts and access
the sources of information in academic context (Karbalaei & Golshan, 2010).
Besides, Kung (2013) insists that reading is “a complex language skill” (p. 194) and
if learners wish to develop it, they should not follow just one certain way when they
read a text. Instead, learners need to engage in a complex process which involves
getting information from the written text and making sense of it by employing
different strategies (Kasimi, 2012).
2.2 EFL reading strategies
As mentioned above, reading comprehension is not easy for EFL learners to

master. Martinez (2008) finds out that many university students of EFL cannot
satisfy the reading demands because they do not know what to read, why to read,
how to read and “often show low level of reading strategy knowledge” (Dreyer,
1998; Van Wyk, 2001, cited in Martínez, 2008, p. 166). Moreover, Amiryousefi,
Dastjerdi and Tavakoli (2012) point out one of the factors that leads to EFL
students’ difficulties in reading comprehension is the “lack of appropriate reading
strategies” (p. 1172). In addition, Zare and Othman (2013) conclude that “research
studies on second/foreign language reading have consistently confirmed the
importance of reading strategies on developing language learners’ reading
comprehension” (p. 187), and comprehension cannot happen successfully without


9

readers’ awareness of strategies (Zare & Othman, 2013) because “strategies are a
reader’s resource for understanding” (Block, 1986, cited in Ebrahimi, 2012, p. 101).
A large number of researchers have defined the term strategy. According to
Karbalaei and Golshan (2010), strategy is the way people think and act to deal with
a task. Kung (2013) also agrees that strategy is “the result of consciously working”
(p. 194) in order to achieve a certain goal. In language learning, Oxford and
Crookall (1989) (cited in Mirzapour & Mozaheb, 2015) define strategies as
“learning techniques, behaviors, problem-solving or study skills which make
learning more effective and efficient” (p. 389). Besides, Amiryousefi et al. (2012)
define strategy as “conscious and subconscious mental processes” which the
learners employ to “plan what to do” and “control the flow of data” in language
acquisition (p. 1174). In other words, strategy can be understood as “learning
techniques, activities and problems solving skills that enhance learning” (Omar,
2014, p. 13).
Recent research studies have made an attempt to define and describe reading
strategies as well as confirm the importance of reading strategies in EFL context.

According to Amiryousefi et al. (2012), “reading strategies are a set of mental
operations that are employed by the readers to comprehend the text or to solve their
comprehension problems” (p. 1174) or reading strategies can be simply explained
as “techniques and methods readers use to make their reading successful” (Baker &
Boonkit, 2004; cited in Zare & Othman, 2013, p. 188). In EFL context, K. T-C.
Chen and S. C-L. Chen (2015) define reading strategies as “conscious processes,
ones in which readers understand the use of EFL reading strategies as they read the
text” (p. 158). Mirzapour and Mozaheb (2015) claim that reading strategies are “the
processes used by students to increase their comprehension or overcome
comprehension failure” (p. 390). Saengpakdeejit and Intaraprasert (2014) refer
reading strategies to “any sets of learning processes, learning techniques, or learning
behavior” (p. 2599) which EFL students employ to comprehend the reading
materials in academic context and improve their reading comprehension skills both


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inside and outside the classroom. EFL reading strategies can be also described as
“what readers reveal in the ways they manage interactions with the text and how
they use strategies to achieve effective reading comprehension” (Carrell et al., 1998;
cited in K. T-C. Chen & S. C-L. Chen, 2015, p. 158). In other words, reading
strategies is any action readers take to conceive of a task, understand the reading
material, and resolve reading problems in order to enhance comprehension (Lee,
2012).
In conclusion, although there are many definitions and descriptions of EFL
reading strategies, it is widely assumed that reading strategies indicate the way
readers plan to accomplish a reading task, how they comprehend the written text
and how they overcome comprehension problems (Derakhshan & Nazari, 2015).
Moreover, after investigating a number of researches, Naidu et al. (2013) suggest
that EFL learners should develop reading strategies if they want to succeed in

reading comprehension. To put it another way, “reading strategies are considered as
one of the features of cognitive psychology which are essential for a successful
comprehension” (Zare & Othman, 2013, p. 188).
2.3 Classification of reading strategies in EFL context
Many studies show that researchers have identified and clarified EFL reading
strategies into various types (K. T-C. Chen & S. C-L. Chen, 2015; Raftari et al.,
2012). According to Kung (2013), “the types of reading strategies could be
classified by their reading process, characters, and functions” (p. 194).
In terms of process, reading strategies are divided into three processes: prereading, while-reading, and post-reading. In the pre-reading stage, from the title of
the reading material, readers probably will have the cues to predict the content as
well as be interested in reading the text. In the while-reading stage, readers skim for
main ideas, focus on the key points in order to comprehend the text. Lastly,
reviewing the main points or summarizing the contents in the post reading stage


11

help readers consider if they have fully understood the reading material (Gagné,
1985; Vacca, 1981; Vacca & Vacca, 1986; cited in Kung, 2013).
Yukselir (2014) and K. T-C. Chen and S. C-L. Chen (2015) divide EFL
reading strategies into two categories: cognitive strategies and metacognitive
strategies when regarding their characters.
Cognitive strategy can be understood as mental process in which learners
operate and deal with the tasks in a skillful way in order to complete the task by
themselves (Chamot & Kupper, 1989; as cited in Shang, 2010). Learners employ
cognitive strategies so as to “construct associations between new and existing
knowledge” and “operate on incoming information to enhance learning” (Yukselir,
2014, p.67). In other words, cognitive strategies are interested in “readers’ use of
prior knowledge and various strategies in their efforts to construct meaning in the
comprehension process” (Pang, 2008; cited in Ebrahimi, 2012, p. 102). According

to Shang (2010) and Yukselir (2014), the important cognitive strategies include
translating into the first language, reading aloud, underlining the texts, paragraphing
or summarizing the material, note-taking the important ideas, visualizing new
knowledge, deduction, using keyword, contextualization, relating new information
to prior background knowledge, predicting outcomes or guessing new information
base on available information. Cognitive strategies are considered “as the actions
and procedures readers use while working with the text” (Sheorey & Mokhtari,
2001; cited in Ebrahimi, 2012, p. 102) in order to comprehend the reading content
(Kung, 2013).
On the other hand, metacognitive strategies are described as “higher thinking
skills that help readers achieve awareness of whether they understand a reading text
or not” (Yukselir, 2014, p. 68). Shang (2010) states that the use of metacognitive
strategies has an important influence on learning achievement, and she also
investigates many studies to explore how other researchers categorize metacognitive
strategies. It can be inferred from her investigation that metacognitive strategies are


12

generally divided into three types: planning, monitoring and regulating or
evaluating. Meanwhile, Bishop et al. (2005, as cited in Yukselir, 2014) suggest a list
of metacognitive strategies which involves using a variety of senses to visualize and
predict the main points of the texts, associating readers’ background with the
information the reading text, analyzing text structure, applying lexical and
grammatical knowledge to understanding a sentence, exploring inferences to
recognize the cause and effect relationship, asking and answering questions, paying
attention to the introduction and conclusion of the text to obtain the main points,
evaluating, summarizing and synthesizing. To conclude, metacognitive strategies
help a reader “allocate significant attention to controlling, monitoring, and
evaluating the reading process” (Karbalaei & Golshan, 2010, p. 67).

Referring to functions, Carrell (1989, cited in Kung, 2013, p. 194) categorizes
reading strategies into repair, effective, and confident strategies. When the readers’
language ability are not strong enough, repair strategy which refers to “using the
context or the meaning of the sentence to solve their vocabulary problem” (p. 194)
helps them to understand the contents of the reading text. Meanwhile, effective
strategy helps readers succeed in their reading. Some examples of effective
strategies are “asking someone, taking notes, highlighting, and summarizing, etc.”
(p. 194). Finally, confident strategy decreases readers’ fearfulness and increases
“their interest to read, including reviewing the article, predicting the contents, and
overview the table of contents” (p. 194). Kung (2013) states that “these strategies
could help readers to get new information and combine their own knowledge to
promote the understanding and memorizing of contents” (p. 194).
Following Goodman (1970, cited in K. T-C. Chen & S. C-L. Chen, 2015) EFL
reading strategies are divided into bottom-up and top-down processes. Goodman
(1986, cited in Omar, 2014) explains that the bottom-up model is a process of
decoding the text “which involves identifying letters, words, phrases and then
sentences in order to get the meaning” (p. 14). This model requires readers to
employ the strategies such as “scanning, breaking the lexical items into their


13

constituent elements, using the knowledge of punctuation etc.” (Amiryousefi et al.,
2012, p. 1174) in order to understand the meaning of words or phrases in the
reading text. Meanwhile, the top-down model is a process of relating “what is being
read to readers background knowledge” to comprehend the text (Janzen, 2003, cited
in Zare and Othman, 2013, p. 188). Top-down model involves strategies such as
“skimming, connecting or relating the information presented in different sentences
or parts of the text, bringing background knowledge to the text, etc.” (Amiryousefi
et al., 2012, p. 1174) which readers make use of to fully understand the reading text.

Therefore, Amiryousefi et al. (2012) conclude that bottom-up strategies are at wordlevel while top-down strategies are at world-level and these two models “must work
in concert with each other”.
It can be concluded that EFL strategies on reading has been categorized into
various types (K. T-C. Chen & S. C-L. Chen, 2015). However, they have been
generally accepted to play an important role in students’ reading performance, and it
is suggested that students should be trained to actively monitor their reading process
(Shang, 2010).
2.4 Reading strategies for better reading comprehension performance
A large number of researchers have made an attempt to provide strategies that
help to enhance reading comprehension. Hosenfeld (1984; cited in Ratna S, 2014),
Ratna S (2014), Derakhshan and Nazari (2015) suggest a variety of “good
strategies” that are: considering the reading purpose, making use of the title to
predict the contents, skimming to get the main points of the reading text, scanning
for specific details of the text, relating information from the text to reader’s prior
knowledge, note-taking, guessing the meaning of a word from context and
grammatical categories, summarizing, paraphrasing, understanding a paragraph by
reading the first line, skipping unknown and unimportant words, considering text
organization, reading the text again to deal with comprehension breakdown,
focusing on reading for meaning, evaluating guesses’ validity, keeping reading,


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acknowledging the word’s origin, considering unfamiliar words, preferring
meaningful reading material, not objecting to guess, exploiting illustrations such as
drawings or pictures, utilizing glosses, only using dictionaries as the last recourse,
basing on predictions, and making use of the context. Ratna S (2014) believes that
these strategies can improve learners’ reading comprehension skill. Another helpful
strategy is paraphrasing which is considered as “an active learning strategy that can
help readers to remember important points by restating with their own words”

(Pressley, 2000, cited in Ratna S, 2014, p. 3).
Meanwhile, according to Naidu et al. (2013), skimming, scanning and
mapping are suggested as useful reading strategies for EFL learners. Brown (2001,
cited in Naidu et al., 2013, p. 58) states that “skimming means looking through a
text at a glance to get the gist of it” and “skimming helps learners to predict the
purpose and identify the main idea of the text”. Nunan (1999, cited in et al., 2013)
mentions that scanning means reading the text quickly in order to get specific
information and scanning “makes reading more understandable to learners as the
extracted information is clearly spelled out” (p. 58). The other strategy is mapping.
Mapping “can be presented in many ways: diagrams, ideas and concepts of a term”
and it is “the process of identifying information and collate the pieces of
information to understand the text” (Naidu et al. 2013, p. 58). Naidu et al. (2013)
also emphasis that learners can make use of these strategies and relate them to their
own knowledge during the reading process.
Although there are a variety of helpful reading strategies (Naidu et al. (2013),
many researchers mention that “strategies themselves are not inherently good or
bad, but they have the potential to be used effectively or ineffectively in different
contexts” (Zhang, 2009, p. 39). Therefore, Carrell (1998, cited in Yukselir, 2014)
and Farrell (2001, cited in Yukselir, 2014) suggest “factors which make a strategy
effective” which are: “(a) who is employing it, (b) how consciously it is employed,
(c) what kind of text is being read, (d) when it is being employed, and (e) why it is
being used” (p. 68).


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2.5 Successful and less successful EFL readers
According to Sheorey and Mokhtari (2001, cited in Karbalaei & Golshan,
2010), successful and unsuccessful readers can be distinguished by the combination
of their awareness and their actual use of reading strategies in the reading

comprehension process.
Block (1986, cited in Omar, 2014) states that successful readers are
distinguished from less successful readers by these four characteristics: “(1)
integration, (2) recognition of aspects of the text structure, (3) use of general
knowledge, personal experiences, and associations, (4) response in an extensive as
opposed to a reflexive mode” (p. 17). First of all, a successful reader can
consciously integrate information in the text during the reading process in order to
fully comprehend the reading material (Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001, cited in
Karbalaei & Golshan, 2010; Omar, 2014; Block, 1986, cited in Raftari et al., 2012).
Secondly, they are able to be aware and make use of the structure of the text as a
clue such as utilizing the glosses, summaries, introductions, conclusions or basing
on the title to make predictions (Block, 1986, cited in Raftari et al., 2012; Oxford,
1990, cited in Shang 2010; Derakhshan & Nazari, 2015). Thirdly, successful readers
are capable of relating what they have already known to the new information in the
reading text and make use of the context clues to accomplish the tasks (Block, 1986,
cited in Raftari et al, 2012; Derakhshan & Nazari, 2015). Last but not least,
successful readers recognize what the author wants to convey in the text and focus
on the author’s information rather than their own thoughts and feelings. Block
(1986) concludes that readers who are able to integrate information, recognize text
structure, and pay attention to the writer’s message succeed in developing their
reading skills.
Additionally, learners who succeed in reading comprehension are said to be
able to recognize some parts of the text that are more important than the others to
pay more attention when reading (Arabsolghar & Elkins, 2001, as cited in Kazemi


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et al., 2013; Yukselir, 2014). According to Ghavamnia et al. (2013), successful
readers read through the text quickly and focus on the key points; they know how to

relate each section of the text to the others, skip unimportant information, pay
attention to the keywords and try to make use of what they have fully
comprehended. It is clearly that successful readers apply a variety of strategies and
they know how to select the most appropriate strategies to accomplish the reading
tasks (Omar, 2014).
On the contrary, less successful readers are said not to be well aware of
employing reading strategies. Hosenfeld (1977, cited in Raftari et al., 2012) states
that unsuccessful foreign language reader fails to understand fully the meaning of
the whole sentence, focuses on short phrases, pays equal attention to both important
and unimportant words, and easily gives up when encounters problems. Ghavamnia
et al. (2013) add that less successful readers try to read word by word, sentence by
sentence rather than comprehending the meaning of the whole text (Ghavamnia et
al., 2013). Besides, Ghavamnia and his partners (2013) find that unsuccessful
readers are not aware of the main ideas and structure of the text as well as “make
use of the text structure to organize the main ideas” (p. 374); they also lack prior
knowledge and do not know how to link their personal experience with the new
information in the reading text; additionally, they have “difficulties in drawing
inferences to achieve in-depth understanding of the texts” (p. 374); lastly,
unsuccessful readers do not have enough metacognitive ability to overcome
problems and monitor their reading process. In conclusion, unsuccessful readers
less utilize useful reading strategies and they are unable to monitor their reading
activities during comprehension process effectively (Sheorey and Mokhtari, 2001,
cited in Karbalaei & Golshan, 2010; Mehrdad et al., 2012).
Furthermore, many studies have shown that the successful readers and the less
successful readers can also be identified by their actual use of reading strategies
(Sheorey & Mokhatari, 2001, as cited in Karbalaei & Golshan, 2010). Studies on
EFL reading consistently emphasize the importance of reading strategies, however,