Investigation of Reading and Writing Strategies Used by Future Teachers: Do Good Readers Write Well?

Abstract

The number of studies regarding determining reading and writing strategies that students use and the effect of strategy training on skills development is quite abundant. However, no study has ever investigated whether there is a correlation between reading and writing strategies in terms of frequency of use. In spite of this, there have been several resources indicating that reading and writing skills are interrelated. Based on the assumption that this indication might possibly impact the use of strategies to some extent, current research aimed to determine the types of strategies used by first grade undergraduate students at a faculty of education together with their frequency of use and if there is a correlation between two scores. To conduct the research, 420 first-grade participants from various departments of Necatibey Faculty of Education, Balıkesir University were selected. As for the data collection, these students were administered a Reading Strategies Survey (RSS) developed by Karatay (2007) and a Writing Strategies Survey (WSS) developed by Ülper (2011). Related statistical analyses were conducted based on the data gathered from the scale, revealing that females used reading and writing strategies more often than males, and there was a moderate and positive correlation between the frequencies of the uses of writing and reading strategies. Apart from that, no difference was detected in terms of departments.