ESL students' beliefs and strategies: A case study of three middle years readers

• Author / Creator

  Moteallemi, Gholam Yahya

• Abstract

  The purpose of this research was to explore, through interviews, miscue and retrospective miscue analysis, and retellings of stories, the oral reading performance of three English as a second language (ESL) students and their perceptions of the reading process, their knowledge of the English language cueing systems and their use of strategies in reading narrative and expository passages in English. The Burke Modified Reading Interview was administered to explore the students’ perceptions of the reading process and of themselves as readers. Additional interviews were conducted to obtain information about their schooling and literacy background. The students’ miscues while reading narrative and expository passage from an informal reading inventory were recorded, transcribed and coded using selected parts of Goodman’s reading miscue inventory. Students listened to their miscues during retrospective miscue analysis sessions and engaged in self-reflection and exploratory talk to discuss why they made those miscues. The findings showed that the students’ perceptions of reading varied. The print-based readers relied heavily on graphophonic strategies and knowledge-based readers focused on semantic strategies in reading the selected passages. All of the participants read below their grade levels. The findings also revealed that these students created images and overarching schemata in their imaginations as they were reading the selected texts. The students performed better on passages about which they had strong background knowledge. Their relative performance with narrative and expository structures varied. It was concluded that ESL students need more instruction and experience in reading informational texts and need to learn new strategies for making inferences from the texts using their knowledge of the language cueing systems and their knowledge of the world.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • ESL students
  • beliefs
  • strategies
  • reading

• Graduation date

  Spring 2010

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R35X47

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.