Profiling the Reading Comprehension Strategies of Malaysian College TESL Students

This paper will present an inventory of reading comprehension strategies of Malaysian College TESL students. More specifically, it outlines the strategies these students commonly use when they read expository texts. The paper is based on a study conducted in a teacher training college in the East Coast of Peninsula Malaysia. The sample of the study comprised 14 students who were pursuing the Bachelor in Education (B.Ed.) TESL foundation course in the teacher training college. Of the 14 college TESL students seven were proficient readers and the rest less proficient readers. Altogether, they read two culturally familiar texts and two culturally unfamiliar texts. The think-aloud method was used to elicit reading comprehension strategies when they read the two different text types. The data were subjected to both qualitative and quantitative analyses. The findings of the study are discussed in relation to past reading strategy research and in the context of current theoretic views about strategy use in reading comprehension.(Author's abstract