scholarly journals Effective English Reading Strategies: English Language Learners’ Perceptions

Author(s):  
Waheeb S Albiladi

Research has shown that second language reading is the bridge that leads to developing otherlanguage skills such as speaking, writing, and vocabulary acquisition. Hence, the present studyaimed to explore adult language learners’ perspectives regarding the most effective andbeneficial reading strategies that can be used to develop their reading competency. Using aqualitative research method, the study examined what specific reading strategies languagelearners believe is effective in developing their reading skills. Analysis of the focus groupsrevealed five different reading strategies mentioned by the participants. These strategies were:Reading Aloud, Silent Reading, Shared Reading, Scanning or Skimming, and Timed Reading. Findings suggest that understanding the use of different reading strategies is important, solanguage teachers need to devote more learning time to introduce reading strategies during ESL classes.

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 220-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caralyn Ludwig ◽  
Kan Guo ◽  
George K. Georgiou

Despite concerted efforts to improve the reading skills of English language learners (ELLs), it remains unclear if the interventions they have been receiving produce any positive results. Thus, the purpose of this meta-analysis was to examine how effective reading interventions are in improving ELLs’ reading skills and what factors may influence their effectiveness. Twenty-six studies with reported outcomes for pretest and posttest were selected, and four moderators (group size, intensity of intervention, students’ risk status, and type of intervention) were coded. The results of random-effects analyses showed that the reading interventions had a large effect on ELLs’ reading accuracy ( d = 1.221) and reading fluency ( d = 0.802) and a moderate effect on reading comprehension ( d = 0.499). In addition, for real-word reading accuracy, intervention groups composed of more than five students were less effective than groups composed of two to five students, and longer intervention sessions were less effective than shorter ones. Overall, our findings suggest that reading interventions have positive effects on ELLs’ reading skills, and they should not be delayed until these students have reached a certain level of oral English proficiency.


Active readers use several approaches to comprehend what they read before, during, and after reading. These readers use their previous experience or information to reflect about the subject, guess the text meaning and apply their skimming and scanning skills to predict the overall meaning. However, for a struggling English language learner (ELL) applying this skill may pose as a real challenge especially when the text level becomes more difficult and they are interpreting unfamiliar texts. One of the factors that may contribute to this problem is the absence of reading strategies. Hence, in this study, five 12-years old ELLs from a School in Johor Bahru were involved to record their usage of reading strategies before and after the reading strategy instructions. The study incorporates the quantitative design and the data collected was analysed using SPSS 16. ELLs answered a set of questionnaires from an adapted survey of reading strategies (SORS) developed by Mokhtari & Reichard (2002). The findings showed that despites their struggling in reading, these learners were able to apply some reading strategies to help them in reading English texts and marked differences in the frequency of reading strategies used at the end of the reading instruction in comparison to the early stage of the study.


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