Revealing the Myth of the Black Box-The Strategic Patterns of the Reading Comprehension Process in Successful and Unsuccessful EFL Readers: A Case Study

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

This study was conducted to investigate how EFL students applied reading strategies to written English. Twenty-nine juniors from the Department of International Business in Cheng-Shiu University (CSU) were randomly selected to serve as research subjects. The Secondary Level English Proficiency Test (SLEP) was administered to evaluate their English reading proficiency levels. All subjects then received 10 hours reading strategy training. A pilot study was conducted immediately following the strategy training. Finally, four students out of the twenty-nine were randomly selected as the main subjects. The two primary purposes of the pilot study were: a) to test the effectiveness of using a think-aloud technique as a research instrument, and b) to assess the levels of difficulty of the written passages. After the final revision of pilot study, all subjects were then asked to read three passages while voicing their thoughts aloud. The data collected was further collated by noting which reading strategies were used by each subject. Finally, protocol analysis, which is emphasized in the process-oriented analysis, was applied to analyze these students' comprehension process while reading an English text. Results on students' protocols revealed that: 1) the majority of good readers compared to poor ones were much better at utilizing the strategies, such as Prediction, Skim/Scan for the General Idea, Monitoring, and Reading Sentence-by-sentence to understand English text; 2) there are five sequential strategic patterns: Text-Oriented, Learner-Oriented, Exploring and Testifying, Wait and See, and Word-Hooking; and 3) unlike good readers, who were more inclined to employ the patterns of Exploring and Testifying and Wait and See, poor readers revealed a tendency to follow the Learner Oriented and Word Hooking patterns to comprehend written text during the reading comprehension process. Furthermore, results confirmed that poor readers showed a greater tendency to over-generalize their understanding of the text, revealed a lack of flexibility, displayed a more limited vocabulary, possessed weaker analytical and synthesizing abilities, relied more heavily on lexical meanings, and showed a lower degree of tolerance for ambiguity. By contrast, good readers were more willing to take risks by venturing guesses, focused constantly on true meaning, and consistently monitored, modified and made relevant associations while adhering to the general meaning of the text. Additionally, good readers tended to read in volume, shifting their attention to individual words only when a breakdown in comprehension occurred. For poor readers, it is suggested that language teachers should first put more emphasis on expanding their receptive and productive word knowledge as well as paraphrasing practice. As for good readers, class time should be devoted to teach them both linguistic competences as well as cognitive learning strategies with more emphasis on training these students the latter skills.