Reading comprehension strategies

Ontario Ministry of Education (2005a), Farstrup (2006), and Cunningham & Allington (2007) indicated the importance of learning comprehension strategies by stating that many students who were good readers in the primary grades will nonetheless struggle to read in the junior grades if they don’t learn the comprehension strategies to deal with the more complex text formats, text features and genres they experience. One factor that distinguishes successful from less successful readers is the use of reading strategies, particularly when comprehension problems are encountered (Brown, 1982; Long, Oppy, & Seely, 1994; Oakhill, 1984; Oakhill & Yuill, 1996). Low-achieving adolescent readers improve their comprehension performance when they learn to apply strategies.

Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods ISSN: 2251-6204

Vol. 8, Issue 3, March2018

Page 102

The National Reading Panel (2000) identified six key reading comprehension strategies in order to fortify children’s reading abilities namely: monitoring comprehension, using graphic organizers, generating questions, answering questions, recognizing story structure, and summarizing.

Moreover, other strategies such as predicting, inferring, making connections and using text-structure clues to identify organizational patterns in text to increase comprehension have been cited (Harvey & Goudvis, 2007; Keene & Zimmerman, 1997; Pearson & Duke, 2002).

Myriad factors affecting the interaction between the reader and the text have been identified. Fountas & Pinnell (2006) stated reading as a thinking process, occurring something to the reader as a person and comprehending a text that is closely related to his life. Rosenblatt’s (1993) theory of interactive process and The Ministry of Education for Ontario (2004) and other studies emphasize the application of a variety of strategies for proficiency.

Schumm (2006) describes strategies as processes that “are controlled by the reader, are metacognitive, are intentional, are flexible, and emphasize reasoning” (p. 229). Afflerbach, Pearson, and Paris (2008) argued that the strategies are deliberate, goal-directed attempts to control and modify the reader’s attempts to decode text, understand words and construct meanings. Schumm(2006) enumerated Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension as the components of Reading. Lipson (2007) listed comprehension Strategies as monitoring understanding, making connections( readers make connections to what they already know, their personal experiences, their knowledge of the world, and the other texts they have read or experienced), asking questions, summarizing, drawing Inferences, synthesizing, determining importance.

Rosenblatt's (1993) declaration of reading as the transaction collides head on with that of Lipson’s making connections and David Nunan,(1989) who sustains the schemata, which means background knowledge, enabling learners to recreate and reconstruct the text’s meaning. Pourhoseein Gilakjani and Ahmadi (2011) emphasize d the importance of schemata in reading as the process that readers combine their own background knowledge with the information in a text to comprehend that text. All readers carry different schemata (background information). So activating the learners’ schemata is an important concept in EFL reading to help the learners adjust the pattern of their own experiences and background.

There are strategies that are used before, during, and after the reading process (e.g., Saricoban, 2002; Schmitt, 1990).

Although it is clear that preparing to read takes place before reading, it could be argued that organizing, restructuring, and synthesizing could take place while reading as well as after reading. Among various types of learning strategies, reading comprehension strategies have long been recognized by researchers of second/foreign language reading (Brantmeier, 2002; Janzen, 1996; and Slataci & Akyel, 2002). Reading strategies defined by some theorists refer to as mental operations used by readers when they read a text and try to understand it effectively (Barnett, 1988). Actually, reading strategies show how readers understand a task, what textual cues they care for, how they apprehend what they read, and what they do when they do not understand. Reading strategies vary from simple fix-up strategies such as simply

Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods ISSN: 2251-6204

Vol. 8, Issue 3, March2018

Page 103

rereading difficult segments and guessing the meaning of an unknown word from context, to more comprehensive strategies such as summarizing and relating what is being read to the reader's background knowledge. Generally, researchers claim that strategy use is different in more and less proficient readers, in that they use the strategies in different ways (Carrell, 1989). In fact, by reading comprehension strategies we can separate the passive, unskilled reader from the active reader in which skilled readers don't just read, they interact with the text. Yau (2005) in his study found that proficient readers employ more sophisticated approaches to reading than less-proficient readers. For instance, in his study the skilled reader employed strategies of summarizing, inference, and synthesizing during and after reading, while the less skilled reader applied bridging inferences, paraphrasing and repetition. In a program of adolescent literacy instruction Moore and his colleagues (1999, P. 5) identified and outlined the following strategies that can be used across a broad range of texts including: activating their prior knowledge of the topic and text, predicting and questioning themselves about what they read, making connections to their lives and other texts and to their expanding worlds, summarizing key ideas, synthesizing information from various sources, identifying, understanding, and remembering key vocabulary, and many other factors. Sheorey and Mokhtari (2001) refer to metacognitive reading strategies as three sub categories: Global, Problem solving and Support strategies. Global strategies are intentional and carefully planned by learners to monitor their reading, such as having a purpose in mind, previewing the text, checking how text content fits its purpose, noting text characteristics like length and organization, and predicting or guessing the text’s meaning. Problem-solving strategies are the actions that readers employ while they are working directly with the text, especially when the text becomes difficult; these strategies include guessing the meaning from unknown words, adjusting one’s reading rate, visualizing the information read, resolving conflicting information, and rereading the text to improve comprehension. Support strategies are what readers use to aid comprehension, such as using a dictionary, taking notes, highlighting textual information, or translating from one’s mother tongue to the target language. Several studies have been investigated the relation between reading comprehension strategies and students achievement. The link between reading comprehension strategies and student achievement and their majors is under questioning.