A Survey of Secondary School Students’ Reading Strategy Use, Teachers’ Perceptions and Practices: the Case of Grade Nine

Abstract

This study tried to explore the reading strategy use of Grade 9 Students of four senior high schools in Jimma Zone as well as their English teachers’ perceived use of reading strategies and awareness. A total of 152 students and 29 Grade 9 English teachers responded to a survey questionnaire with a five point Likert scale. The students’ questionnaire had 28 items of reading strategies which were adopted from Mokhtari and Sheorey (2002) Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) to measure non-native English speakers’ metacognitive awareness and perceived use of reading strategies. The teachers’ questionnaire had 16 items that deal with the reading strategies they use when they teach reading lessons and other 18 items that assess their awareness of reading strategies. The collected data were computed and analyzed using descriptive statistics and revealed that students’ reading strategy use as well as teachers’ reading strategies instruction is of ‘moderate’ level to a large extent. On the other hand, teachers’ awareness of reading strategies is of ‘high’ level.

Key words: Reading strategy, Cognitive strategies, Metacognition