Teaching Reading Strategies: How Methodology Affects Language Course Articulation

Abstract

This study examines whether university‐level French students trained during the second semester to use effective reading strategies and skills demonstrate better reading comprehension and, hence, perform better in the third semester than their untrained peers. The experimental reading activities were derived from recent L1 and L2 reading process theory and research; a sample text, exercises, and lesson plan appear together with teacher and student reactions to the experimental reading practice. These self‐report data show widely varying responses to the experimental approach to reading and provoke considerable reflection about the impact of both the teacher variable and cognitive styles on language learning. The repeated measures experiment compares the performance of experimental and control groups on a standardized reading test at the end of the second‐and third‐semester courses. Although it shows that students given special training in reading made somewhat more progress in reading comprehension than did their peers in the traditional course, it does not solve definitively the problem of articulation within language courses. The experiment results, together with the analysis of student and teacher reactions, prompt further questions about how to examine the impact of various language teaching methodologies and about the value of encouraging students to analyze their own learning processes.

The Effect of Speed Reading Strategies on Developing Reading Comprehension among the 2nd Secondary Students in English Language

“…The students who participated in the study showed the motivation and attraction during the training sessions based on speed reading strategies which agreed with the theoretical background of the same studies like Broughton et al (1980), Bever and Bover (1970) and Waldman (1972) about the importance of using speed reading strategies to improve the students' comprehension The results of the study agreed with Baunann's (1984), Barnett's (1988) and Rababa'h's (1991) results in their studies of training students on comprehension skill to get the main idea. The result approved what Mackenzie (2011) clarified about the thinking through reading comprehension strategies that should follow the following steps : Making Connections, Retelling, Visualizing, Asking Questions, Making Predictions, Making Inferences, Understanding Text Structure, Determining Importance, Identifying the Author's Message, and Synthesizing.…”

L2 Reading Ability: Further Insight into the Short‐circuit Hypothesis

“…Closely related to understanding the nature of reading is recognizing the influence of metacognitive awareness and strategy training. Research (Barnett, 1988a(Barnett, , 1988bCarrell, 1989;Swaffar, Arens, & Byrnes, 1991) suggests that understanding the process and then working to modify one's behavior improves L2 r e a d i n g comprehension. I n this way, students can better learn to transfer their L1 reading ability and to draw on compensatory factors such as contextual a n d formal schemata t o overcome the barr i e r of l i m i t e d l a n g u a g e c o m p e t e n c y a n d , thereby, to short circuit the short-circuit effect of the language threshold.…”

Current Developments in Second Language Reading Research

“…In a later study, Carrell, Pharis, & Liberto (1989) showed that strategy training with semantic mapping and with the ETR (experience, text, relationship) method both improved reading comprehension scores. Barnett (1988a) reported improvement in reading comprehension from a year-long strategy training experiment in reading. In a related experiment over one semester (Barnett, 1988b), however, she did not see significant improvement in the training group.…”