Language learning strategies “offer the tools for learners to manage their own learning” (Grenfell & Erler, 2007, p. 6) and have the potential to make language learning more successful. Grenfell and Erler (2007) shared the view that “strategy work has a much greater potential to shape our pedagogy than has hitherto been grasped and that an overly utilitarian, ‘feed-in’ approach to strategies takes a far too limited view of that potential” (p. 6). In the last four decades quite a number of studies has set to identify strategies used by successful language learners, in general, and skilled readers/comprehenders, in particular, focusing on three main areas: strategy types and how they relate to reading proficiency, L1 and L2 reading strategies comprising linguistic and non-linguistic factors, and reading strategy instruction (Cohen & Macaro, 2007). Oxford (2001) defined L2 strategies as “specific behaviours or thought processes that students use to enhance their own L2 learning” (p. 362), while Chamot (2004) stressed that strategic learners possess “metacognitive knowledge about their own thinking and learning approaches, a good understanding of what a task entails, and the ability to orchestrate the strategies that best meet both the task demands and their own learning strengths” (p. 14). Starting from the premise that reading is a problem- solving process, Goodman (1998) explained how reading strategies functioned, arguing that “reading strategies include sampling the text once the reading has been initiated, making inferences, predicting, and confirming” (p. 227) when reading makes sense, but, when the text does not make sense, readers disconfirm and consenquently self-correct “selectively to support their construction of a meaningful text” (p. 227).
Unlike the area of general language learning, where learning strategies have been studied extensively for several decades (e.g. O’Malley & Chamot, 1990), in the area of early language learning there have been relatively few studies related to strategic language use.
48 Moreover, the issue of strategy development and assessment in early L2 reading has been neglected. Grabe and Stoller (2011) focus on reading strategies and clarify the meaning of the term by defining reading strategies as “abilities that are potentially open to conscious reflection, and reflect a reader’s intention to address a problem or a specific goal while reading” (pp. 9-10). The authors warn, however, that “many abilities that are commonly identified as strategies are relatively automatic in their use by fluent readers (e.g. skipping an unknown word while reading, rereading to re-establish text meaning)” (Grabe & Stoller, 2011, p. 9) and that the distinction between strategies and skills is not fully clear because of the nature of the reading processes as a cognitive activity. The authors also argue that a strategic reader is someone who is “able to read flexibly in line with changing purposes and the ongoing monitoring of comprehension [since] reading is an evaluating process in that the reader must decide if the information being read is coherent and matches the purpose for reading” (Grabe & Stoller, 2011, p. 12). They propose a long list of sample reading strategies: 1. specifying a purpose for reading; 2. planning what to do/what steps to take; 3. previewing the text; 4. predicting the contents of the text or section of text; 5. checking predictions; 6. posing questions about the text; 7. finding answers to posed questions; 8. connecting text to background knowledge; 9. summarising information; 10. making inferences; 11. connecting one part of the text to another; 12. paying attention to text structure; 13. rereading; 14. guessing the meaning of a new word from context; 15. using discourse markers to see relationships; 16. checking comprehension; 17. identifying difficulties; 18. taking steps to repair faulty comprehension; 19. critiquing the author; 20. critiquing the text; 21. judging how well purposes for reading were met; and 22. reflecting on what has been learned from the text (Grabe & Stoller, 2011).
Strategic learners apply strategies as ‘the conscious actions’ that they take to improve their performance in the learning and use of L2 (Anderson, 2005). Although numerous
49 research studies of L1 reading strategies have demonstrated the importance of reading strategy training for reading comprehension, it is important to know that not all L1 reading strategies usually transfer automatically to L2 reading contexts, but this process depends on the readers’ experience with effective reading strategies used in L1 reading contexts; obviously, successful transfer of L1 reading strategies and practice of new ones depends on L2 learners’ metalinguistic knowledge (Grabe & Stoller, 2011). As a consequence, “L2 literacy learning in one sense may be less effortful if the child is already able to transfer strategies from L1” (Pinter, 2011, p. 145 ).
However, in spite of ample research of language learning strategies, and the discussions of the importance of reading strategies, research of L2 reading strategies is extremely limited. Cable et al. (2010) pointed out that “there is limited research on strategy instruction for early L2 literacy (e.g. encouraging learners to infer meanings from context, to identify cognates or to analyse word structure),” but stressed the fact that some small scale studies of early L2 strategy instruction “present positive preliminary results” (p. 29). The fact that there have been relatively few studies of young language learners’ reading strategy use is possibly due to young children’s cognitive immaturity. Since strategies are difficult to observe, they are most often identified through self-reporting (using a questionnaire, an interview, a think-aloud protocol, a diary or a journal), which has limitations as, frequently, young learners “may not remember the strategies they have used in the past, may claim to use strategies that in fact they do not use, or may not understand the strategy descriptions in the questionnaire items” (Chamot, 2004, p. 15). It is, therefore, reasonable to collect the data related to strategy use as soon as possible after the process of reading, to increase the possibility of readers’ remembering the strategies they have used in performing the task.
Very few studies have addressed the development of reading strategies of young L2 learner/beginner L2 reader, while even fewer have focused on longitudinal interventions for
50 strategy development (Macaro & Erler, 2008, p. 90). Cohen and Oxford’s (2002) draft of Young Learners’ Language Strategy Use Survey, comprising a total number of 60 strategies related to L2 learning, suggested 18 reading strategies distributed in three groups: ‘What I do to read more’, ‘What I do to understand what I read’, and ‘What I do when I don’t understand what I read’ (p. 75). The Survey was used to create a reading research instrument to be used with young learners in Croatia (Radišić & Pavičić-Takač, 2007). The adapted instrument comprised 13 items classified into two groups of strategies: 1. social (external) strategies, comprising six strategies, such as asking for help or using a dictionary/textbook; 2. cognitive (independent) strategies, comprising seven strategies, such as using clues, rereading, or reading extensively (Radišić & Pavičić-Takač, 2007). The instrument was used to assess fourth-graders’ reading strategies in three Croatian schools (Horvatić, 2013). The results showed that more successful beginning readers used independent strategies more often, judging by the data collected through the interviews and the journals, relying on their own comprehension and inferencing skills and using their own background knowledge and personal experience, while less successful beginning readers used external sources of information more often, relying on other people’s help; moreover, more beginning readers used external sources of information more often than independent strategies (Horvatić, 2013). A very interesting finding was a negative and insignificant correlation between success in reading and independent strategies self-reported by children through questionnaires; the author concluded that either children were not aware of their strategy use or found it difficult to evaluate their strategy use (Horvatić, 2013). The author finally concluded that participants were independent readers as more than two thirds reported reading independently at home, using a dictionary instead of asking someone for help, dictionary use being classified as a cognitive strategy, not as an external strategy (Horvatić, 2013).
51 So far most of the studies of young language learner reading strategies have referred to L2 in immersion contexts, like Chamot and El-Dinary’s (1999), who studied reading strategies of young language learners in language immersion classrooms. They investigated third- and fourth-grade foreign language learners’ learning French, Japanese and Spanish, with the aim of identifying strategies used by more effective and less effective learners when reading and writing. The results of the research indicated that the two groups did not differ in total strategies used, but there was a difference in types of strategies used by high rated students. Moreover, the authors reported that qualitative analysis of think-aloud transcripts suggested that effective learners used their repertoire of strategies more flexibly, monitoring and adapting them, while less effective learners tended to stick to ineffective strategies, being either unaware of their ineffectiveness or not being able to adapt them, e.g. relying on single strategies or using the same strategy repeatedly. When reading, effective learners focused on the task as a whole, relying mostly on inferencing (24.6 per cent), while less effective learners focused on details, relying mostly on phonetic decoding (43.6 per cent), i.e. decoding single words or focusing on the words they did not know (Chamot & El- Dinary, 1999). The authors came up with two groups of reading strategies: 1. metacognitive strategies: planning, selective attention, and monitoring; 2. cognitive strategies: background knowledge (inferencing, predicting, and elaborating), language knowledge (decoding, deducing and substituting), manipulating information (retelling, summarizing, translating), using resources (dictionaries, charts, questions), recall strategies (sequence, association, brainstorming, visualisation, audio recall) and metacognitive awareness (automatic understanding, knowledge of L2, inference, L1-L2 comparisons, self-awareness and affect). They concluded on the basis of the interviews with children, that learners “as young as grade 1 were often able to describe their thinking in rich detail,” indicating that metacognitive awareness begins at an early age (Chamot & El-Dinary, 1999, p. 331).
52 Reading strategy use of bilingual primary pupils in Singapore was investigated by Rao, Gu, Zhang and Hu (2005). Analyses of think-aloud protocols revealed two different levels at which children processed texts in English and two groups of reading strategies applied: deep-level and surface-level strategies. The deep-level processing strategies were used for creating a mental representation of the text, employing prior knowledge; these strategies involved: inferencing, prediction, contextualization, global questioning of the text, recognition of the text structure, comprehension evaluation, summarization, appreciation of the given text, and reconstruction (Rao et al., 2005). The group of surface-level processing strategies was used for comprehension at word and sentence level; these involved paraphrasing, rereading, local questioning of text, and questioning vocabulary (Rao et al., 2005). The results suggested that successful readers tended to apply deep-level strategies most of the time and a larger repertoire of reading strategies, while less successful readers relied mainly on surface approach, which resulted in their poorer comprehension of the text and poorer achievement in retelling the text; what is more, there was a “sharp discrepancy between two groups of pupils in reading strategy use” (Rao et al., 2005, p. 262).
Zhang, Gu, and Hu (2008) conducted another study with Singaporean primary school pupils, focusing on children’s use of reading strategies in English as L2. Case studies and think-aloud protocols of reading strategy use in grades four to six suggested that flexibility and appropriateness of reading strategy use varied according to children’s language proficiency and grade level: high-proficiency pupils’ achievements were better than lower- proficiency pupils’ results, and higher graders used a bigger number of strategies than lower graders. The authors also reported that less successful readers relied mostly on bottom-up processing (decoding, sounding out or repeatedly reading unknown words), not being aware of the connection between reading and meaning-making, unable to monitor their own comprehension or to identify reading problems, engaging in wild guesses instead of making
53 inferences or predicting; on the contrary, successful readers managed to create a conceptual framework quickly and to monitor and evaluate their comprehension (Zhang et al., 2008). Zhang et al. (2008) concluded that “high- and low-proficiency pupils differed in the strategies they used to understand the text” (p. 258), and older students’ comprehension was particularly good. The basic taxonomy drawn from pupils’ reading behaviour involved metacognitive, cognitive and social-affective strategies, classified as follows: 1. metacognitive: self-initiating, planning, monitoring, evaluating, follow-up decision–making (rereading); 2. cognitive: perceptual processing (fixation, repetition, decoding), parsing/organization (inferencing, prediction, contextualization, translation, imagery), utilization / elaboration (reconstruction, summarization, relating to personal experience, appreciation of given text, evaluate using genre), using resources (using a dictionary); and 3. social-affective: social (cooperative learning, asking for help), affective (trying to enjoy, avoiding embarrassment) (Zhang et al., 2008). The authors also found that “the more mature students who were two or three years senior to the younger ones used comprehension strategies more frequently and flexibly and had clearer awareness of the reading process,” while “unsuccessful readers most often could not decode properly and even if they decoded, their decoding was not really focusing on meaning making” (Zhang et al., 2008, pp. 263- 264). In relation to metacognitive awareness, the authors concluded that primary school children “appeared to be less systematic and less resilient in their metacognitive endeavours” (p. 265) than adult earners, which was also true for their use of cognitive strategies, asking for explicit training in comprehension monitoring and word-attack strategies that would help children solve the problems caused by limited linguistic knowledge.
Yet another study of young English language learners’ use of literacy learning strategies in Singapore was conducted by Gong, Zhang, Zhang and Kiss (2011). The focus of this large-scale study were socio-psychological factors and strategy use in reading and
54 writing of primary Grade 3 pupils. The questionnaire concerning reading strategies comprised 40 statements related to strategic behaviour of young learners, which were later classified into five different groups: 1. goal setting and planning; 2. comprehension enhancement; 3. attention management; 4. coping with unknown words; 5. monitoring and evaluation (Gong et al. 2011). The results revealed that boys and girls differed only in relation to coping with unknown words: girls reported more frequent use of strategies in this respect (Gong et al., 2011). The results also showed that self-reported strategy use was determined by children’s motivation and out-of-school learning effort: learners with high interest in reading tended to use strategies more often, those with the highest self-efficacy reported using strategies more often, and learners who read after school reported using strategies more often. (Gong et al., 2011). The significance of the study is primarily in revealing that third-graders “did attempt to use different literacy strategies, though the average frequency of strategy use was not very high,” and in pointing to the relations between the use of strategies and the learners’ gender, motivation, self-efficacy and out-of-school efforts (Gong et al., 2011).
A recent study of young learners’ strategy use has been conducted by Griva (2014). It was a large-scale study of fifth grade pupils’ reading strategy use in Greek as L1 and in English as a foreign language. Skilled readers reported using more reading strategies, being more aware of using appropriate and effective reading strategies, and having greater flexibility in employing strategies than less skilled readers. Moreover, skilled readers used reading strategies similarly in L1 and in L2. On the contrary, less skilled readers employed fewer reading strategies in L2 than in L1 overall. The study also showed that pupils preferred problem solving strategies to global and support strategies. Gender differences were noticed in awareness of reading strategy effectiveness and frequency of application: girls were found to be more aware of their strategy use, while boys reported using strategies more often in both languages.
55 The effect of the age factor on reading strategies in English as L2 was studied by Šamo (2009). Although the participants were teenagers (aged 13-14), the findings may be generalised for other age groups as the study focused on different behaviour of successful and less successful learners/readers and the reading strategies the learners reported in verbal protocols. Analysis of verbal protocols describing the use of strategies while doing three cloze tests, revealed multiple use of strategies for meaning construction (Šamo, 2009). The author distinguished 26 reading strategies classified into five categories: 1. supervising strategies, like recognising loss of concentration, stating failure to understand, stating success in understanding, adjusting reading style, formulating a question, making a prediction, referring to lexical items that impede comprehension, confirming/disconfirming an inference, referring to the previous passage, and responding affectively; 2. support strategies, like skipping unknown words, and expressing a need for help; 3. paraphrase strategies, like using cognates, breaking lexical items into parts, paraphrasing, translating a word, and extrapolating from information in the text; 4. strategies for establishing coherence in text, like rereading, using context clues, reacting to the author’s style, reading ahead, using background knowledge, acknowledging lack of background knowledge, and relating stimulius sentence to personal experience; 5. other strategies, like changing an answer (Šamo, 2009). The results showed that “good readers used a significantly greater number of strategies when reading the passages, whereas poor readers used significantly fewer strategies while solving the same cloze passages” (Šamo, 2009, p. 127). Moreover, successful readers used self-supervision strategies more often than less successful readers, while less successful readers mainly referred to words/phrases that impeded their comprehension, asking for help and acknowledging the lack of background knowledge. Successful readers also used a wider range of reading strategies, and used them more often than less successful readers; successful readers were more verbal, used their working memory more efficiently, remembered more
56 information, and monitored and evaluated their reading. However, the study indicated that there was no significant difference related to the period of L2 learning as the learners who studied L2 for a longer period were not better readers (Šamo, 2009). The author concluded that starting age should be combined with other factors, both contextual and individual, when determining difference.
Macaro and Erler (2008) studied the impact of strategy instruction on reading comprehension, reading strategy use and attitudes to studying French of a sample of 62 young learners aged 11-13, studying French as a foreign language (L2) in England. Pointing to the fact that “very few studies have focused on beginner readers,” the authors emphasized the complete absence of longitudinal interventions such as theirs (p. 90). The main aim of this longitudinal quasi-experimental researcher-manipulated study was to investigate how, after 15 months of strategy instruction, the measures of reading comprehension of the instructed sample compared to achievements of a group of 54 students who had received no instruction in reading strategy use; also, the authors wanted to determine if strategy instruction had any effect on motivation for studying French. The authors designed a questionnaire with a comprehensive list of reading strategies “which matched the reality of their context” and comprised 12 reading strategies and approaches to be used while performing a task, as a response “to the recent call by the researchers in the field for task-based strategy questionnaire“ (Macaro & Erler, 2008, p. 102). The twelve items described learners’ actions and behavours when they saw a text of several sentences or a paragraph in French as L2. The findings showed that the intervention group outperformed the comparison group both in reading comprehension and reading strategy use. Moreover, the findings indicated that the patterns of strategy use changed in the intervention group in which learners tended to use