Investigating Reading Strategy Use in EFL Environment: Instructors' and Preparatory Class Students' Perspectives *

Abstract

This study investigated whether receiving cognitive and metacognitive reading strategy training explicitly would make a difference in the University preparatory class students’ reading comprehension. From the instructors’ aspect, the instructors’ views about and approaches to teaching reading strategies were investigated and compared to each other. 83 students and 4 instructors participated to the mix-method study. Following the Solomon-four-group design the participants were divided into 2 research and 2 comparison groups. Data collection methods were pre-post reading comprehension test, CRSUS, MRSUS, TRSUS, selfevaluation checklists, interviews and classroom observations. The results of the study show that there is no significant difference in the reading comprehension of the comparison and research groups at the end of the term. For the instructors, the results indicate that the research group instructors had tendency to use more reading strategies. The paper concluded with implications and suggestions for the future research