EFL teachers' beliefs and practices on reading strategies and strategy instruction in university level reading classes

Abstract

The present study aimed to explore EFL teachers’ beliefs on reading strategies and the instruction of them and to investigate their actual classroom practices on pre, while and post-reading types. In order to identify teachers’ beliefs regarding reading strategies, a questionnaire was administered to forty two reading teachers teaching at the DBE (Department of Basic English), YTU (Yıldız Technical University) at the beginning of the second term of the 2008-2009 academic year. The questionnaire consisted of three different parts with the first of them questioning teachers’ individual background. There were five points Likert-type items in the second and third parts adapted from Chou (2008), Grabe and Stoller (2002), Sallı (2002) with the necessary adjustments made after piloting the questionnaire. Following the collection of the questionnaire, three teachers were chosen for the observations by looking at the distribution of answers they reported in the questionnaire. The lessons of these three reading teachers were observed weekly throughout the spring term of the 2008- 2009 academic year. With the end of the observations, semi-structured interviews were conducted with these three observed teachers and two other teachers taking the questionnaire in order to capture a deeper understanding of teachers’ beliefs and the rationale behind their practices. SPSS 16 was used to complete the quantitative analysis; accordingly frequencies and percentages were run for the questionnaire. Furthermore, to decide which type of strategies (i.e. pre, while or post) was favored and practiced by teachers most, one way within subjects ANOVA was computed. NVivo 8 software was employed for the qualitative analysis of the observations and interviews. The recurring themes provided more detailed insights into teachers’ beliefs and classroom applications of reading strategies. It was recorded that on the whole reading teachers of the DBE, YTU valued prereading strategies more than while or post-reading types. In response to the question how teachers’ beliefs were reflected in their classroom practices, pre and while reading strategies were discovered to be equally employed types whereas postreading strategies did not get much attention. Specifically, teachers reported both valuing and practicing guessing the meaning of unknown words from the context strategy the most. In addition to these, the participants of this study were noted to conform to the steps of strategy training lessons as they are suggested by the literature. Accordingly, they performed explicit strategy instruction, modeling the strategy, guided and free practice stages in the observed sessions. Moreover, the reading department of the DBE, YTU was acknowledged to put much emphasis on extensive reading through a variety of different activities. The participant teachers also expressed their appreciation of these extensive reading activities since they help extend the internalization of reading strategies and in turn lead to successful reading skills. Finally, the findings of this study were discussed in comparison to similar studies in the literature and pedagogical implications for EFL teachers were drawn.