Students' awareness and use of reading strategies in 'communicative English skills' across three Ethiopian universities

Abstract

Students in higher education have to learn reading strategies in order to succeed in their studies. Reading is one of the four basic language skills that can lead to a successful academic career and productive personal life. The purpose of this study was to investigate students‟ awareness and use of reading strategies in „Communicative English Skills‟ (CES) across three Ethiopian universities. English is taught as a Foreign Language in Ethiopia. Most universities teach a first year course known as CES. The study investigates students‟ awareness of reading strategies, the reading strategies they use, factors that affect their actual use of reading strategies and the impact of students‟ reading strategies on their final results. The study was informed by the seven strategies of reading suggested by Moreillon (2007), National Reading Panel (2000) and Pearson, et al (1992). A sample of 600 first year regular students who were taking the course „Communicative English Skills‟, and 72 English language teachers who were offering the course in the three Ethiopian universities were part of the research population. The sample of students was obtained through a random sampling technique (lottery method) and the teachers were selected using a purposive sampling technique; respectively. Descriptive and interpretive research designs were used for this study within the post-positivist research paradigm. A mixed methods research approach, most specifically, convergent parallel approach was used for this study. The quantitative data were collected through questionnaires whereas the qualitative data were collected via semi-structured face-to-face interview, participant based classroom observation and open-ended items of the questionnaires. The result indicated that students of the three Ethiopian universities had very limited awareness of reading strategies and that they hardly used the seven strategies of reading in the course „Communicative English Skills‟. This problem emanates from different factors such as students‟ lack of prior knowledge, their limited vocabulary knowledge for reading, English teachers‟ professional incompetence in teaching reading strategies, students‟ deficiency in metacognitive information, students‟ knowledge gap on how and when to use reading strategies and their poor experience of maintaining focus while reading. Thus, the students‟ improper use of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies had negative impacts on their reading performance such as demotivation to reading texts in English, poor performance in reading activities in English, and poor achievement in the activities that require reading in English. The recommendations are that English teachers should give rigorous and practical attention to the overall conceptualizations and strategies of reading; they should provide their students technical and professional instructional support and motivate them to read different texts in English. Students should regularly and meticulously read different materials that are written in English and consistently practice proper and integrated use of reading strategies. On the other hand, curriculum designers and course material writers should present reading texts that are authentic, simple and understandable for the learners in the course.