The Impacts of Explicit Strategy Instruction on Reading Performance from Students Perspective: A Case Study

Abstract

This paper reported on part of a larger study to explore how Vietnamese non-English major students perceived the impacts of explicit strategy instruction (ESI) on reading comprehension. Instruction on reading strategies was conducted for 6 weeks in which students were taught explicitly previewing and predicting, skimming, scanning, guessing the meaning of the unknown words from the context and summarizing strategies. Data were collected from forty-five non-English major students at a university in Vietnam through group interviews and learning reflections. Three semi-structured interviews were conducted in groups of three to four students, and thirty-nine learning reflections were collected to obtain in-depth information about the impact of the ESI. The findings revealed that, after the instruction, the students reported using various reading strategies in four strategy categories, namely problem-solving, global, support and local strategies. In addition, the ESI was perceived to be cognitively beneficial, as students reported heightened awareness of using reading strategies in reading comprehension, expanded reading strategy repertoire, greater reading fluency, and higher reading scores. From a non-cognitive affective perspective, students reported that the ESI motivated them to read with a higher level of confidence and become more autonomous in reading in English. The study offers implications for teachers, students and materials writers in teaching and learning English reading skills in non-English major learning contexts and perhaps in other settings.