The effects of L2 reading proficiency, reading purposed and text type (exploratory versus narrative) on Saudi EFL students reading problems and strategies an exploratory study
Research in L2 reading strategies has reported various factors affecting ESL/EFL readers' cognitive and metacognitive processing of texts. These include variables related to the reader, the text and the task assigned. Although L2 readers' variables (e. g., L2 reading proficiency, vocabulary knowledge, prior background knowledge) have received considerable attention from L2 reading investigators, there still remains a lack of qualitative empirical studies that investigate how variations in text types and reading purposes can impact the strategic processing of L2 readers with varying reading proficiency. Hence, this study, through think-aloud reporting and retrospective interviews, explored the reading problems and strategies reported by 16 Saudi EFL readers processing expository and narrative texts for two imposed purposes for reading. The qualitative coding of the verbal protocols yielded a constructed taxonomy of seventy strategic processes. Of the three explanatory variables, text types (expository vs. narrative) proved to be the most influential, yielding significant differences for four out of six major categories and specific strategies, especially five bottom-up strategies. Generally, strategy-use mean
Alkhaleefah, Tarek A. A.
The effects of L2 reading proficiency, reading purposed and text type (exploratory versus narrative) on Saudi EFL students reading problems and strategies an exploratory study. Research in L2 reading strategies has reported various factors affecting ESL/EFL readers' cognitive and metacognitive processing of texts. These include variables related to the reader, the text and the task assigned. Although L2 readers' variables (e. g., L2 reading proficiency, vocabulary knowledge, prior background knowledge) have received considerable attention from L2 reading investigators, there still remains a lack of qualitative empirical studies that investigate how variations in text types and reading purposes can impact the strategic processing of L2 readers with varying reading proficiency. Hence, this study, through think-aloud reporting and retrospective interviews, explored the reading problems and strategies reported by 16 Saudi EFL readers processing expository and narrative texts for two imposed purposes for reading. The qualitative coding of the verbal protocols yielded a constructed taxonomy of seventy strategic processes. Of the three explanatory variables, text types (expository vs. narrative) proved to be the most influential, yielding significant differences for four out of six major categories and specific strategies, especially five bottom-up strategies. Generally, strategy-use mean
effect reading proficiency read purpose text_type exploratory versus narrative saudi_efl student_read problem strategy exploratory_study reading strategy report various_factor affect esl reader cognitive metacognitive processing text include variable related reader text task assign although reader variable reading proficiency vocabulary_knowledge prior background_knowledge receive_considerable_attention reading investigator still_remain lack qualitative empirical_study investigate_variation text_type read purpose impact strategic processing reader vary reading proficiency hence study think_aloud reporting retrospective interview explore reading problem strategy report saudi_efl reader process expository narrative_text imposed purpose reading qualitative cod verbal protocol yield constructed taxonomy seventy strategic process explanatory variable text_type expository narrative prove influential yield significant_difference major_category specific_strategy especially bottom_up strategy generally strategy_use mean