Reading is considered to be a vital skill for academic success, yet it is seldom taught to or practised with students. Students begin to `read to learn' during primary and secondary schooling. However, at tertiary level the academic demands are much greater than before and involve more extensive reading of conceptually more complex texts. This study investigates the implementation of an intensive reading programme for post-matric English Second Language Science students, based on the assumption that reading improves reading. In addition, this study investigates the effect that reading ability has on academic performance in Science, which relies inter alia, on the ability to read, comprehend and interpret word problems. An intervention group and a control group were used to ascertain the effects of an intensive reading programme and the findings suggest that any reading (intensive or extensive) improves reading and language skills. This in turn impacts on academic performance in Science, if students have an ability in Science to begin with. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / MA - SP APPLIED LINGUISTICS

Many L2 students in Namibia are not adequately prepared for the academic demands of university courses, mainly because of poor reading skills in the L2. University students reading below their maturational levels, can mainly be attributed to their print-impoverished backgrounds, as reading is a skill that develops mainly through reading. Without any assistance, poor readers at university will continue to read poorly and as a result perform weaker in their academic courses compared to their peers who are better readers. The overall aim of this study is to explore the effects of a reading intervention program on a group of university students in Namibia. A quasiexperimental method with a control and an intervention group was employed. The effect of reading ability on academic performance was also investigated. In addition, through a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, the pre-literacy experiences of students, the differences between good and poor readers at university, their views about the reading intervention program as well as the attitudes and practices of university lecturers towards reading instruction at tertiary level were examined. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / M.A. (with specialisation in Applied Linguistics)

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:06:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 MKM.pdf: 917584 bytes, checksum: cea833f5d98c17ebc0535d899cf9f518 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-07-07 / This present work has as objective to analyze the interpretation of the syntactic and semantic meaning performed by third graders in the nominal groups (NGs) with attributive adjectives in the English language in a text of the final exam in the ESP (English for Specific Purposes) discipline. The corpus is made up of 30 exams of two classes from a third grade institution of the biomedical area, corresponding to the basic and advanced levels of the second term in 2006. The text has 24 NGs of different lexical content, a total of 27 NGs in the whole text summing up to 810 analyzed occurrences. The analysis is carried out at the morphologic, syntactic and semantic levels using as theoretical background the traditional and functional grammars (QUIRK et al, 1985; CELSE-MURCIA et al, 1998; TUCKER, 1998), in their semantic aspects, the Semantics (FRAWLEY, 1992) and the Cognitive Linguistics (TAYLOR, 2002). We concluded that the main difficulties were due to the lack of vocabulary and to the use of mother tongue strategies instead of using the top-down strategies for reading a text in English to compensate this gap. We also observed that even when the vocabulary was known, there were difficulties in establishing the semantic and syntactic relations between modifier and noun head. We suggested improvements for the teaching of reading English texts at the third grade grounded in the obtained results such as a more comprehensive study of the several different morphologic and syntactic structures of the NGs with premodifiers and their semantic consequences, an approach of the morphologic, syntactic and semantic aspects of the NGs and the use of both top-down and bottom-up strategies when reading a NG in the English language / Este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar a interpreta??o do significado sint?tico e sem?ntico realizada por alunos universit?rios de Ingl?s Instrumental nos sintagmas nominais (SNs) com adjetivos atributivos na l?ngua inglesa em um texto da prova de final de semestre. O corpus ? constitu?do por 30 provas de duas turmas de uma institui??o de n?vel superior, da ?rea biom?dica, do segundo semestre de 2006, do n?vel b?sico e avan?ado. O texto da prova ? composto por 24 SNs de conte?do lexical diferente, num total de 27 SNs presentes no texto, totalizando 810 ocorr?ncias analisadas. Usamos como pressupostos te?ricos as gram?ticas tradicional (QUIRK et al, 1985) e funcionalista (CELSE-MURCIA et al, 1998; TUCKER, 1998), em seus aspectos sem?nticos, a Sem?ntica (FRAWLEY, 1992) e a Ling??stica Cognitiva (TAYLOR, 2003). Conclu?mos que as maiores dificuldades deveram-se ? falta de vocabul?rio, ao uso inadequado de estrat?gias da L?ngua Materna no lugar de se usar as estrat?gias descendentes de leitura para suprir esta falta. Observamos tamb?m que, mesmo quando se conhecia o vocabul?rio do SN, muitas vezes houve dificuldades em se perceber a rela??o sem?ntica e/ou sint?tica entre os modificadores e o n?cleo do SN acarretando inadequa??es de interpreta??o. Sugerimos melhorias para o ensino da leitura de textos em l?ngua inglesa nas universidades com base nos resultados obtidos, como um estudo mais detalhado das v?rias estruturas morfossint?ticas dos SNs com modificadores antepostos e suas conseq??ncias sem?nticas; uma abordagem conjunta dos aspectos morfol?gico, sint?tico e sem?ntico dos SNs com adjetivos atributivos na l?ngua inglesa e o uso das estrat?gias descendentes juntamente com as ascendentes ao se ler um SN na l?ngua inglesa

CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Este estudo trata da formação do sujeito-leitor na escola, do sexto ano do Ensino Fundamental, principalmente no âmbito público, em que há a sua interação com textos literários. Há a pretensão de mostrar que o ensino de literatura é um trabalho possível de se realizar na escola, bem como de estabelecer métodos de ensino para a aprendizagem escolar. O método é a pesquisa-ação, associada às oficinas de estrutura modular e ao círculo de leitura semiestruturado, com o objetivo de ensinar e aprender as estratégias de leitura. A seleção de livros de gêneros literários como mitos, fábulas e contos de fadas evidencia a construção de conhecimento prévio deste sujeito-leitor, a fim de estabelecer uma comunicação estratégica com uma obra contemporânea. A pesquisa foi desenvolvida numa escola pública do município de Senador Canedo, Goiás, com alunos que tinham pouco conhecimento sobre os gêneros literários descritos acima. Através da perspectiva do letramento literário, cuja prática social do processo de leitura é principalmente da escola, houve um cuidado com a construção das oficinas, atividades e círculos de leitura, com o intuito de que a leitura fosse o foco principal. Houve um grande envolvimento dos participantes com o projeto, além dos objetivos, em sua maioria, serem alcançados. Acredito que o projeto ultrapassou os limites da decodificação dos textos e mostrou aos alunos a importância de se posicionarem diante da obra literária, ao perceberem os códigos e os valores culturais, de seu grupo social e de outros grupos que foram percebidos a partir das leituras. Isso sugere que houve uma ampliação de seu mundo interior. A partir desta proposta, alunos e a professora foram capazes de identificar, adaptar e construir novos conceitos e novas formas de se encontrarem com as obras lidas e consigo mesmos. / This study deals with the training and shaping of the school student-reader from the sixth year primary education level, essentially those from public schooling, where the student interacts with literary texts. The intention hereby being to show that teaching through literature is possible within the school environment, as well as establish teaching methods for school learning. The method centers on research-action, associated with modular structure workshops as well as with the semi-structured reading circle, which has the objective to teach and learn the reading strategies. The selection of books from literary genres, such as myths, fables and fairy tales shows the construction of prior knowledge within this student-reader, where a strategic communication connection is established with a contemporary work. The research was developed in a public school from the municipality of Senador Canedo, Goiás, with students that had little knowledge of the literary genres described above. Through the perspective of literary literacy, for which the social practice of the reading process is mainly the school, special care was taken in the construction of the workshops, activities and reading circles, where the aim was to make reading the focal point. The commitment from participants was seen throughout the project, with the objectives, in their major part being reached. I believe that the project surpassed the point of identification and interpretation of texts and showed to the students the importance to be placed on the literary work, through their perception of the codes and cultural values, from their social group as well as others noted from these readings. This suggests that there was an enlargement of their interior world. Through this proposal, the students and the teachers were capable of identifying, adapting and constructing new concepts and new ways of interacting not only with the works dealt with, but also with themselves. / Dissertação (Mestrado)

The thesis deals with predicting, as one of the basic reading strategies applied through out the reading lessons in primary school. The major objective of this study is to identify the main principles of successful application of this strategy in the field, in the terms of all three involving aspects: the teacher, the student and the text. The thesis consists of a theoretical and empirical part. The theoretical part defines the key principles of the mental process when the reader is making predictions. This part deals with the theoretical framework and analyzes related terms to that issue. The practical part presents gathered data from the action research that involves plans of model reading lessons aimed at the strategy of predicitng and my own teaching practice that has been finally reflected. The results of this research provide some support for teachers who decide to implement the strategy into their literature lessons. KEYWORDS didactics of literature, early literacy, reading literacy, reading strategies, reading comprehension, predicting, critical thinking

The purpose of this research was to conduct case studies to explore and describe Thai university students' awareness and application of cognitive and metacognitive strategies when reading and writing in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL). Four participants, including two high and two low English language proficiency learners, were selected from 14 students enrolled in a five-week course called English for Social Sciences offered at Kasetsart University in Bangkok, Thailand in 2005. The major sources of data for the analyses included the transcripts of the participants' pair discussions, think-aloud protocols, interviews, and daily journal entries. In addition, field work observations, reading and writing strategy checklists, participants' written work, and the comparison of the pretest and posttest results were also instrumental to the analyses. The interpretive approach of content analysis was employed for these four case studies. Findings were initially derived from the single-case analyses, and then from cross-case analyses. Major findings revealed that strategic knowledge enhanced these English-as-a-foreign- language (EFL) learners' proficiency in English reading and writing. However, applying elaborative strategies for higher-level reading was challenging for most of the participants. Two crucial factors that impeded their development were the learners' uncertain procedural and conditional knowledge of strategy uses and their limited English language proficiency due to limited exposure to the second language (L2). The teacher's explanations and modeling of strategies, the participants' opportunities to discuss strategy use with peers, and extensive practice positively enhanced their development. Additionally, the learners' schema and knowledge of text structures played significant roles in their development of the two skills. These English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners also developed metacognitive awareness and strategy applications, but not to the level that always enhanced effective regulation and control of their reading and writing behaviors. Combining reading and writing in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) instruction promoted the learners' awareness of the relationships of certain strategies for the two skills, and developed their literacy skills holistically.

Text information is frequently found in mathematics education. For students to gain an understanding of how to handle the text tasks, a competent teacher is required to provide the students with different kinds of tools to read mathematical text problems. The purpose of this study is to gain an insight into which reading strategies teachers in grades 4-6 consider using for text assignments in mathematic teaching. The study was conducted through quantitative questionnaires and qualitative interviews. All participants were active teachers and had different experiences regarding reading strategies, which is important for how they adopt strategies and the extent to which they are used in teaching. The study is inspired by a phenomenographic approach. The results have been analyzed based on SMK, which focuses on subject knowledge skills development is of importance when teachers need too deep their knowledge. Similarly, the results are analyzed from PCK, which highlights the importance of teachers motivating students 'learning and making adjustments based on pupils' needs and conditions where alternative working practices are mandated. The results of the study show that it can often be complicated to approach and understand text tasks in mathematics since it is not only text that is to be understood. The results of the interviews show that teachers are aware of the importance of working with reading strategies in text assignments in mathematics. However, teachers do not work with the strategies to the same extent that is advocated by reciprocal teaching, transactional strategy teaching, and concept-oriented teaching models. The study shows that reading strategies can be further developed. To achieve this, teachers considered collegiate learning advantageous. / Textuppgifter förekommer ofta i matematikundervisningen. För att eleverna ska kunna få en förståelse för hur de ska ta sig an textuppgifterna, krävs en kompetent lärare som ger eleverna olika slags verktyg för att kunna läsa matematiska textuppgifter. Studiens syfte är att få en inblick i vilka lässtrategier lärare i årskurs 4–6 anser sig använda, vid textuppgifter i matematikundervisningen. Studien genomfördes via kvantitativa enkäter samt kvalitativa intervjuer. Alla deltagare var verksamma lärare och hade olika erfarenheter kring lässtrategier, vilket har betydelse för hur de tar sig an strategier samt i vilken omfattning de används i undervisningen. Studien är inspirerad av en fenomenografisk ansats. Resultatet har analyserats utifrån SMK som fokuserar på ämneskunskaper, där kompetensutveckling är av vikt när lärare behöver fördjupa sina kunskaper. Likaså analyseras resultatet ur PCK som belyser vikten av att lärare motiverar elevers lärande samt gör anpassningar utifrån elevers behov och förutsättningar där alternativa arbetssätt förordas. Resultatet i studien påvisar att det många gånger kan vara komplicerat att ta sig an och förstå textuppgifter i matematik, då det inte är enbart text som ska förstås. Resultaten från intervjuerna visar att lärarna ser betydelsen av att arbeta med lässtrategier vid textuppgifter i matematik. Däremot arbetar inte lärarna med strategierna i den omfattning som undervisningsmodellerna reciprok undervisning, transaktionell strategiundervisning och begreppsorienterad undervisning förespråkar. Att lässtrategier kan vidareutvecklas framgår i studien, där lärarna ser kollegialt lärande som en fördel.

Bakgrund: Att som elev läsa och tillgodogöra sig en läst text beskrivs som antingen ytlig läsningeller djup läsning. Ytlig läsning beskrivs innebära ytlig förståelse och att läsningen där stannarvid textens sakinnehåll och vid detaljer. Djup läsning innebär att eleven ifrågasätter och ser attett innehåll finns även där det inte uttrycks.Syfte: Det övergripande syftet med studien var att undersöka hur textfrågors utformningpåverkar elevers uppvisade läsförståelse. Forskningsfrågorna som besvarades var ”vilkalikheter och vilka skillnader finns det i elevernas svar på textfrågorna?” Och ”vilka läsarter ochlässtrategier behärskar elever utifrån hur de besvarar textfrågorna?”.Metod: Studien är en kvalitativ och kvantitativ interventionsstudie bestående av ett förtest,intervention med tre variationer och ett eftertest. Totalt deltog 24 gymnasieelever som läsersvenska 1, dessa 24 elever var uppdelade i två grupper. En av dessa grupper delades därefterupp vid interventionstillfället i ytterligare i två grupper, sammanfattningsvis blev det treinterventionsgrupper med 3 olika interventioner. Till förtestet användes Ray Bradburys novellDet långa regnet, till interventionsstudien användes Den korta sommaren en novell av sammaförfattare. Till eftertestet användes Timmen H också av Ray Bradbury. För att bedöma ochanalysera elevernas svar utformades en nominalskala för att kategorisera tillfredställande svaroch otillfredsställande svar.Resultat: De som fick ytliga frågor, intervention I, kunde besvara frågor inriktade på ytligläsförståelse. I intervention II så visade deltagarna att de kunde besvara frågorna som varbaserade på djup läsförståelse. I intervention III så skulle deltagarna beskriva vad berättelsenhandlade om och göra en sammanfattning, där visade nästan hälften att de kunde göra dettatillfredsställande. Sammanfattningsvis har båda grupperna kunskap om olika läsarter.Fördelningen av kunskap om läsarter mellan grupperna visar att det finns en ojämnläskompetens bland elever trots likvärdig utbildning.Resultatdiskussion och metoddiskussion: Studien skulle kunna beskrivas med hjälp avordspråket: ”som man frågar får man svar”. Studien visar betydelsen av hur frågorna till en textutformas, ställs och i vilket syfte. Förutom att besvara didaktikens grundfrågor behöversvensklärare ha kunskap om elevernas tidigare läserfarenheter när frågor om textens innehåll ställs / Background: When students read and comprehend a text, they use either surface reading ordeep reading comprehension. Deep reading comprehension is described as when the studentquestions the text and can identify information by reading between the lines. Surface readingcomprehension is described as when the reading only focuses on what is written in the textwithout reading between the lines.Aim: This essay aimed to find out how study questions formulation impact students’ perceivedreading comprehension. The research questions were “what similarities and differences can befound in the students’ answers?” and “which reading strategies does the students comprehendbased on their answers on the study questions?”.Design and methodology: This study uses a qualitative design. This is an intervention studycompiled of a pre-test, intervention, and post-test. The number of participants were 24 UpperSecondary School students, taking the course Svenska 1, these 24 students were divided intotwo groups. The first group was divided into two further groups, making three interventiongroups in total. The material used for the pre-test was a short story by Ray Bradbury called Detlånga regnet (a translation of The long rain), the material used for the intervention was the shortstory Den korta sommaren (a translation of All summer in a day) written by the same author.The material used for the post-test was the short story Timmen H (a translation of Zero Hour)by the same author. To evaluate the participating students’ answers a nominal scale was createdto categorise satisfactory answers to unsatisfactory answers.Results: the students who received study questions based on surface reading, intervention I,were able to answer study questions based on surface reading. The students in Intervention IIwere able to answer study questions based on deep reading. The students in Intervention IIIwere asked to summarize the short story and almost half of the group succeeded in this task.The two groups have different knowledge of reading strategies. The distribution of knowledgeof reading strategies shows that the reading skills of the students are uneven despite equivalenteducation.Conclusion: The study questions the students receive affects their reading comprehension. Thestudy demonstrates the importance of how questions are formulated, asked and the purpose ofthe study question. Not only should teachers answer the basic questions of didactics, Swedishteachers at Upper Secondary School need background knowledge on students previous readingknowledge when asking questions on the content of the text.

In my workplace, the pupils' shortcomings in reading comprehension were noticed after a teacher at theschool noticed that only a few students actively participated in the whole class teaching and that few pupils could answer questions related to the text that was read in the whole class. The pupils in year sixat the school already have uneven results in reading comprehension and the reading lessons that has been conducted in the two classes has for the most part consisted of whole class tutoring and individual work.  Based on the development needs that I have noticed in my workplace, the purpose of this study is to analyze four student groups' work with text conversations and find out what role support has in text conversations to develop students' reading comprehension. Furthermore, the study intends to investigate whether text conversations in small groups can increase students' participation in reading instruction inthe the swedish subject. Based on this, the following questions have been formulated:  How can text conversations in small groups serve as support for students and promote the use of reading strategies? How can text conversations in small groups increase students' participation in reading lessons?  The analytical tools that has been used to analyse the empirical data is scaffolding, reciprocal teaching and the participation model. Qualitative methods have been used to collect empirical material. These arefocus group interviews and observations. The results show that support, participation and interaction are important concepts that can, to a large extent, effect students' reading comprehension development.

Given the importance of reading in life, it is worrying that reading comprehension as well as the interest in reading among Swedish students, especially older students, have decreased during the 21st century. One way of addressing this problem is the explicit teaching of reading strategies, which has proven effective in improving reading comprehension and is supported by the revised English as a Second Language (ESL) syllabus published by the Swedish National Agency for Education (SNAE) – effective as of 1 July 2021. This systematic literature review aims to examine the reading strategies mentioned in the revised syllabus and what these can entail in practice. This is done by comparing them to reading strategies investigated in previous research and investigating the didactic and pedagogical consequences that can arise in the teaching as a result of the wording in the ESL syllabus. The results of this research review were sorted into the following categories of strategies: visualising, retelling, predicting content, posing questions, taking notes, identifying main ideas and inferencing, and associating and using prior knowledge. The results show that the wording in the ESL syllabus, as it stands, complicates interpretations for teachers, but that the strategies can be described using research independent from SNAE, somewhat facilitating the actual use of the syllabus for working teachers. It can, however, not be assumed that teachers do this with their limited time. The results also show that education among teachers on reading strategies, at least in L2, is inadequate, affecting the quality of reading strategy teaching and the reading comprehension of students. Thus, it is of importance that teachers obtain knowledge of the teaching of reading strategies, suitably during their studies at the teacher education programme. Future research could benefit from investigating the actual use of reading strategies in classrooms, comparing reading strategies in ESL to other subjects, or looking into textbooks’ use of reading strategies.