Reading is an important skill for all languages and all language learning. It is a skill complex to understand, complex to teach and complex to learn. This thesis addresses the issue of reading from the reader's point of view. It provides a detailed analysis of the reading strategies used by the Yemeni learners of English at the tertiary level as they read textbooks. In doing so it draws from two domains of second/foreign language learning, viz reading and strategies. Within the framework of these two domains it focuses on readin g strategies, depending on the first part (reading) on the reader-text interaction view of reading and for the second part (strategies) on the conscious effort involved in solving a reading problem. It investigates two related aspects of the reading process: reading problems arising in the creation of meaning as far as the systemic and schematic knowledge is concerned and reading solutions as given by the reader. The concept of 'strategy' is first examined as it is found in learning and communication studies. It is then presented in reading and reading models. Studies that have addressed the issue are then reviewed. Reading strategies are investigated through a five-stage design where a different instrument is used in each stage. Subjects in each of the five stages (questionnaires, interviews, classroom observations, doze/recall tasks and verbal protocols in Li and L2) range from 60 to 100 in number, coming from two different disciplines, viz Education and Engineering. The data of the study are analysed using quantitative and qualitative techniques. The results present a picture of the strategies the readers used in reading texts in Arabic and in English in the form of some twenty-four different strategies, which are categorised as problem identifying and problem-solving ones. These strategies are then discussed with reference to the reading models presented earlier. On the basis of this, implications for theory and pedagogy are made.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:281616 |
| Date | January 1992 |
| Creators | Yar Mohamed, Shirin Yassin |
| Publisher | University College London (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10020196/ |
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