Students’ Awareness of Reading Strategies in ‘Communicative English Skills’ Across Three Ethiopian Universities

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate students’ awareness of reading strategies in ‘Communicative English Skills’ (CES) across three Ethiopian universities. A sample of 600 first year regular students and 72 English language teachers were part of the research population. The sample of students was obtained through a random sampling technique (lottery method) and the teachers were selected using a purposive sampling technique; respectively. A descriptive quantitative research design was used for this study. Thus, the data were collected through questionnaires from students and their English teachers. Quantitative analysis of data was made using frequency and percentage. The result indicated that students of the three Ethiopian universities have very limited awareness of both cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies. This problem emanates from students’ limited exposure and poor habit of reading in English, their lack of motivation for reading texts in English and their teachers’ instructional problems of teaching reading and reading strategies. The recommendations are that students should maximize their exposure of reading texts in English and comprehensively invest their time and efforts to improve their reading habit. The English teachers should teach students the overall conceptualizations of reading and its strategies when they teach reading. The teachers should also provide students with technical and professional support and motivation to make them be cognizant of reading.