Awareness of Reading Strategy Use of Indian ESL Students and the Relationship with Reading Comprehension Achievement

Madhumathi P,Arijit Ghosh

doi:10.5539/elt.v5n12p131

Abstract

This paper reports findings from the study that assessed the first year Indian ESL students’ awareness of reading strategy use. It also investigated the relationship that exists between reading strategy use and the reading comprehension achievements of the Indian ESL students. The study utilized two instruments such as SORS and RCT which is the modified version of TOEFL reading comprehension. The reading strategies are classified into the global, problem solving and supporting. The results showed that the students employed problem solving strategy the most and they least preferred to use global strategies. The difference in the strategy use is statistically significant except for supporting strategy. The high proficiency students over performed the middle and the low proficiency students in terms of strategy use. Overall, the reading strategy use moderately correlated with the reading comprehension achievement of the Indian students. There is a significant difference in the use of strategy by Gender, in which the female students reported using more strategy than that of male students. The pedagogic implications of these findings are discussed in terms of practices in the Indian society. Thus, the study identifies the Indian ESL students, reading strategy preferences and suggests remedial measures for classroom teaching.

Highlights

Reading is an essential skill that ensures success in academic learning (Alderson, 1984)
The overall reading strategy use of Indian English as a second language (ESL) students exhibits characteristics of active strategic readers. This reports that the ESL readers are consciously employing a wide variety of reading strategies similar to that of native readers of English, in order to achieve comprehension
As mentioned in previous researches, the students could have possibly transferred the awareness of the reading strategies from the L1 reading strategy to ESL reading (Grabe & Stoller, 2002; Zhang, 2008)

Summary

Introduction

Reading is an essential skill that ensures success in academic learning (Alderson, 1984). Reading process and reading ability will directly help the students to excel academically (Alderson, 1984, Carrell, 1991; Clarke, 1979; Cziko, 1978). L2 researches on reading have made several efforts to identify the variety of reading strategies that contribute to successful comprehension. The reading strategy list comprises of well-known items like skimming, scanning, and inferring to the more recently conceptualized ones such as stimulating schemata, identifying text structure, using mental images, envisaging, asking questions, monitoring comprehension, assessing strategy use (Anderson, 1991; Carrell, 1989; Block, 1986; Cohen, 1990; Pressley, 2002; Zhang et al, 2008)

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