Effective strategies for English reading comprehension

It is undeniable that reading skills play a crucial role in English learning and in expanding knowledge in general. The majority of EFL students find it hard to comprehend English texts during their learning process or when taking examinations. Reading strategies help learners comprehend English reading passages efficiently.
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Effective strategies for English reading comprehension EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES FOR ENGLISH READING COMPREHENSION Đào Thu Uyên, Dương Phi Yến, Phạm Phú Khải, Trần Nhân Hậu* Faculty of English Language, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH) Supervisor: Tran Nhat San (MA) ABSTRACT It is undeniable that reading skills play a crucial role in English learning and in expanding knowledge in general. The majority of EFL students find it hard to comprehend English texts during their learning process or when taking examinations. Reading strategies help learners comprehend English reading passages efficiently. This paper aims to discuss the role of reading comprehension and provides some common reading strategies to improve EFL learners’ reading comprehension. Keywords: EFL, effective strategies, reading comprehension. 1 INTRODUCTION English is one of the most popular languages in the world since it allows learners to communicate with a wider range of the world’s population. Among different skills in this language, reading is considered a challenging area for EFL learners. There are many difficult problems that learners may encounter such as issues with decoding, poor comprehension, and reading speed. As a result, to read effectively and to understand more about what the author wants to impart in passages, learners must have useful strategies while reading. Therefore, applying effective reading strategies is essential in order to help EFL learners shorten reading time but still comprehend the text. 2 DEFINITION AND THEORIES OF READING COMPREHENSION 2.1 Definition of Reading Comprehension According to Simon, Rhinehart, Howard and Cho (2010) reading is basic in all academic disciplines and comprehension is the process of eliciting and making meaning through interaction and involvement with written language. Karizak and Laleh (2016) stated that comprehension is a process in which readers make meaning by interacting with text through the combination of prior knowledge and previous experience, information in the text, and the views of readers related to the text. The result of reading comprehension is the internal interpretation of the context of the text, which is coupled with the prior experience of the 2788 reader. Reading comprehension is the interpretation of what a text entails and the concepts that the writer is trying to express, both textually and subtextually (Snow, 2002). 2.2 Theories of Reading Comprehension There are two types of theories of reading comprehension: content literacy, and cognitive processes. 2.2.1 Content Literacy Content literacy is the ability to read, understand, and learn from texts from a particular matter. There are three types of content literacy: general literacy abilities, content-specific literacy abilities, and previous knowledge of content. The general and the content-specific literacy abilities indicate some more general type of knowledge that does not hinge on the detailed content of a particular text. This knowledge is applied to make a text-base in the mental representation (McNamara & Joe, 2009). Previous knowledge of content is the knowledge that is related to the content of a particular text and is applied to make a situation model in the mental representation. For example, it is not obvious that mathematics makes a necessity for content-specific literacy abilities and the reading comprehension in mathematics hinges on more general literacy abilities and previous knowledge. It can be stated that the symbolic language in mathematics is the main cause for the need of content- specific literacy skills (McNamara & Joe, 2009). 2.2.2 Cognitive Processes Cognitive strategies involve interacting with the material to be learned, manipulating the material mentally or physically or applying a specific technique to a learning task. Ghavam and Mohammad (2011) defined cognitive strategy as related to the “task at hand and the manner in which linguistic information is processed” (p. 17). Cognitive strategies are used by learners to transform or manipulate the language. In more specific terms, this includes activating and using background, predicting, summarizing, visualizing, making inference. 3 EFFECTIVE READING STRATEGIES Following Block’s taxonomy and based on O’Malley and Chamot’s framework, Fotovatian (2006) and Marzban (2006) EFL learners should apply cognitive, and metacognitive strategies while reading. These strategies are mentioned by Block and O’Malley and Chamot for their large benefits. Metacognitive strategies are higher level skills that plan for, observe, or measure the success of a learning activity. 3.1 Cognitive strategies Cognitive strategies include distinctive stages: predicting, activating and using background knowledge and summarizing. Firstly, readers may apply what they know about a writer to forecast what a text will be about. During reading, successful readers can make predictions about what will occur next, or what opinions the writer will offer to support a discussion. Readers try to assess these predictions ceaselessly and change any prediction that is not 2789 approved by the reading (Harvey, 2000). The good language learner may be a good guesser, that is, he gathers and stores information in an efficient manner so it can be easily retrieved. Learners should pick out the words he understands and infer the rest. Second stage is activating and using background knowledge. Readers often draw on their background knowledge and experience to help them understand what they're reading. Good readers apply their understanding of the text to create associations with it. Research has shown that students who are able to make these personal connections to the text and ques ...