Do EFL Teachers Reduce the Reading Gap in Qatar? A Study of Strategy Instruction in Government Schools

Teachers’ instructional practices are crucial to students’ achievement in reading comprehension. Students’ low English reading competence in Qatar’s government schools raises concerns about not only reading comprehension strategy instruction, but also, subsequently, learning as a natural outcome of teachers’ praxis. This quantitative survey investigated English as a foreign language (EFL) reading comprehension strategy instruction of a broad cross-sectional sample of (1-12) EFL teachers (n=754) of government schools in Qatar. The study examines teachers’ most frequently used strategies and explicit strategy instruction. To relate the findings of an exploratory data analysis, descriptive statistics, including means, standard deviations, and frequencies, were calculated for each 5-point Likert scale questionnaire item using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS-Version 24) statistics software. Results revealed that participant teachers reported a generally moderate and high frequency of using comprehension strategies (lowest mean 3.56 and highest mean 4.52). The seven most used strategies (mean score ≥4) were: Identify main ideas, set purpose for reading, predictions, preview text, monitor comprehension, prior knowledge activation, and handle unfamiliar words. Conversely, the five strategies reported a comparatively lower use frequency (mean score ˂4) were: Text structure, questioning, visualizing, summarizing, and think aloud. The major findings on explicit strategy instruction indicated that teachers ignored the gradual release of responsibility to students. The implications of these findings suggest that EFL teachers demonstrate moderate use of reading comprehension strategy instruction. Further recommendations for the Ministry of Education, school principals, and teachers are offered.

iSTART StairStepper—Using Comprehension Strategy Training to Game the Test

Literacy skills are critical for future success, yet over 60% of high school seniors lack proficient reading skills according to standardized tests. The focus on high stakes, standardized test performance may lead educators to “teach-to-the-test” rather than supporting transferable comprehension strategies that students need. StairStepper can fill this gap by blending necessary test prep and reading comprehension strategy practice in a fun, game-based environment. StairStepper is an adaptive literacy skill training game within Interactive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking (iSTART) intelligent tutoring system. StairStepper is unique in that it models text passages and multiple-choice questions of high-stakes assessments, iteratively supporting skill acquisition through self-explanation prompts and scaffolded, adaptive feedback based on performance and self-explanations. This paper describes an experimental study employing a delayed-treatment control design to evaluate users’ perceptions of the StairStepper game and its influence on reading comprehension scores. Results indicate that participants enjoyed the visual aspects of the game environment, wanted to perform well, and considered the game feedback helpful. Reading comprehension scores of students in the treatment condition did not increase. However, the comprehension scores of the control group decreased. Collectively, these results indicate that the StairStepper game may fill the intended gap in instruction by providing enjoyable practice of essential reading comprehension skills and test preparation, potentially increasing students’ practice persistence while decreasing teacher workload.

Investigating reading comprehension strategies used by teachers during English First Additional Language reading instruction

Since the purpose of reading is comprehension, the major goal of reading comprehension instruction is to help learners develop knowledge, skills, and strategies so that they become strategic readers who read for comprehension. Language teachers use reading comprehension strategies as an instruction tool to assist learners to develop into strategic readers. However, the range of strategies used by teachers is crucial. This paper presents classroom observations of reading comprehension strategy instruction used by four purposively selected English First Additional Language (FAL) teachers. The study was qualitative in nature and a case study design was chosen. The findings of the study reveal that teachers did not provide opportunity to support learners’ independent comprehension strategy use. Furthermore, the study has disclosed that the teachers’ inability to engage learners in reading comprehension strategies might signify the teachers’ lack of knowledge of how to incorporate reading comprehension strategies as an instructional tool during reading comprehension lessons. The authors recommend that the Department of Basic Education institute interventions to empower teachers on how to teach reading comprehension strategies.

Perverse Clotheslines

Chapter 1 corrects common misperceptions of Altman’s approach as antinarrative (and therefore anti-Hollywood), which rely on an underdeveloped conceptualization of “narrative” conflating narrative structure, narration, and story world. Applying these distinctions makes clear that, structurally, Altman’s early 1970s films largely fit within the classical Hollywood storytelling tradition. Altman’s narrative strategies are best regarded as perversely classical, employing principles and techniques associated with classical Hollywood’s preoccupation with efficient storytelling, though not for the sake of narrative economy but to make room to expand the aims of Hollywood storytelling. Moreover, meeting Altman’s elaborative aims requires integrating rather than substituting or assimilating art cinema narrational strategies. Altman drapes on his classically structured narrative “clotheslines” an overt and reflexive narrational voice that selectively ironizes its subjects and primes audiences for interpretation. This grounded approach enables a “closure without comprehension” strategy resolving causal structures while leaving affective and thematic implications ambiguous.

How to “TRAP” Information: A Reading Comprehension Strategy for Students With Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

The intertwined academic and behavior deficits, often referred to as the failure cycle, of students with and at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) negatively impact learning and skill acquisition. Reading comprehension is one academic area where students with and at risk for EBD display significant deficits. The self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) instructional approach is one method that accounts for students’ metacognitive skills and learning behaviors, making it a promising approach for use with students with and at risk for EBD, including students served in more restrictive settings. This article provides an overview of SRSD, a reading comprehension strategy taught using the SRSD instructional approach, and describes how to integrate low-intensity behavior strategies into SRSD reading instruction to further support the needs of students with and at risk for EBD.

STRATEGIES FOR COMPREHENSION OF PROFESSIONALLY ORIENTED TEXTS: HEADER AS AN ELEMENT OF THE FORECASTING STRATEGY

Рассмотрены вопросы обучения студентов неязыковых факультетов стратегиям понимания профессионально ориентированного текста с учетом выбранного профиля, а также личности студента, заинтересованного в получении профессиональных знаний, в том числе при использовании иностранных источников информации. Дано определение стратегии понимания и сделан акцент на стратегии прогнозирования. На примере стратегии прогнозирования, а именно анализе заголовка текста как элемента стратегии прогнозирования, наглядно продемонстрировано, что владение стратегиями ускоряет ментальные процессы восприятия и эффективность переработки информации. Прогнозирование, представляя собой актуализацию уже имеющихся знаний, является основным компонентом зрелого чтения. The article discusses the issues of teaching students of non-linguistic faculties strategies for comprehension a professionally oriented text, taking into account the profile of the specialty, as well as the personality of a student interested in obtaining professional knowledge, including of using foreign sources of information. The definition of the comprehension strategy is given and the emphasis is made on the forecasting strategy. Using the forecasting strategy as an example, namely the analysis of the text title as an element of the forecasting strategy,it is clearly demonstrated that mastering strategies accelerates and facilitates the mental processes of perception and the efficiency of information processing. Forecasting, being the actualization of existing knowledge, is the main component of mature reading.

Summary Strategies for Literary Texts in English

One of the problems when students go to university is that they are faced with insufficient skills (reading, summarizing and writing). These skills are not just an option for students – they are a necessity. One of these skills is text summarizing. Summarizing strategies may be called the gist of the literary text. Different summarization strategies may be required for different text types and lengths. The ability to summarize well means your reading comprehension and writing skill should be excellent. Summarization is a high-level comprehension strategy which is effective in improving reading achievement and text summary quality. Several approaches have been developed to analyse summarizing skills which are required to teach and learn English at all levels especially at university level. The research was conducted among students of the second year English department at University of Vlora. The summaries reflect the major differences among the strategies used by skilled and unskilled students. The skilled students produce coherent linguistic and syntactic structures. Skilled (high-proficiency) students use semantic and prepositional phrases more than unskilled students (low-proficiency). Thus, the skilled students do not distort ideas of the original text but distort subject-verb order. When they summarize, we can easily distinguish the way in which they combine idea units across two or more paragraphs. The summaries reflect that students write very long sentences. The margin of errors is considerable due to the mother tongue influence and their level of English.