Reading strategies of advance and intermediate Iranian students: a case study

Abstract

Reading is a skill that enables readers to acquire knowledge and obtain information from the text that they have read. It is a thinking process by which readers select facts, information or ideas from printed materials. In reading and understanding the printed materials effectively, many strategies have been suggested to cultivate good reading habits and also to motivate readers to read more. The aim of this study is to investigate the strategies used by Iranian postgraduate students while reading academic texts. There are two postgraduate students in two different level of proficiency: intermediate and advance.. Think-aloud protocol is the main source of data collection. The supplementary data collection of this study is questionnaire to identify the strategies that students have used while reading. Moreover, in-depth interview sessions also were conducted in order to lighten the unclear points. The results indicate that advance Iranian student mainly make use of more strategies (cognitive and metacognitive strategies), while intermediate Iranian student generally make use of cognitive strategies.