KUNG S.-S.
texts and then made sense from them. By the interesting inter-
actions from the readers and texts, more and more researchers
keep working with studies about the relationship between read-
ing comprehension and the use of reading strategies.
However, when talking about strategy and skill, it was ap-
parent that they were different. Strategy meant people used
planned methods and actions to achieve their goals, but skill
was a routine and reflex behavior. Because strategy was a con-
scious, specific, and integral planning, readers could use it to
handle different reading materials (Dole et al., 1991). Besides,
strategy was the result of consciously working toward goals. It
helped readers to understand the meaning of contents to find
out answers or attain a certain performance level in reading that
they want for themselves (Gagné, 1985).Pearson and Fielding
(1991) summarized what happened during their version of stra-
tegic reading:
“Students understand and remember ideas better when
they have to transform those ideas from one form to an-
other. Apparently it is in this transformation process that
the author’s ideas become [the] reader’s ideas, rendering
them more memorable. Examined from the teacher’s per-
spective, what this means is that teachers have many op-
tions to choose from when they try to engage students
more actively in their own comprehension: summarizing,
monitoring, engaging visual representation, and requiring
students to ask their own questions all seem to generate
learning” (p. 847).
Besides, Perkins (1992) also had a statement to suggest
teachers had to tell students the important ideas on both benefits
of requiring and using cognitive strategies:
“Complex cognition has more intrinsic interest and prom-
ises more payoff outside of school and later in life. But
consider the cost to learners: complex cognition demands
much more effort. It creates greater risk of failure. It in-
troduces the discomforts of disorientation, as learners
struggle to get their heads around difficult ideas. Peer
status for complex cognition is certainly mixed; who
wants to be known as a ‘brain’? And very commonly, so
far as grades and teacher approval go, complex cognition
buys no more than the simpler path of getting facts
straight and the algorithms right. No wonder, then, that
students perfectly reasonably do not automatically gravi-
tate toward complex cognition” (pp. 59-60).
Oxford (1992-1993) stated that students would like to use
their preferred strategies which reflected their learning styles.
For example, students in an analyzing learning style would like
to prefer a strategy such as rule-learning, while students with
global learning style would prefer to use strategies to find out
their picture (i.e., scanning, predicting) and help them to under-
stand the contents without knowing all the words (i.e., gestur-
ing). When mentioning reading strategy, different researchers
used different aspects to discuss it. Based on the other related
researches, the types of reading strategies could be classified by
their reading processes, characters, and functions. In some
reading teaching researches (Gagné, 1985; Vacca, 1981; Vacca
& Vacca, 1986), they divided the use of reading strategies into
three processes of before reading, during reading, and after
reading. Before reading, readers might use cues from the title of
article, or predict the contents to establish the interest to read
the articles. During reading, readers might choose the main
points to read or understand the relationship between sentences
to help them understand the contents. After reading, readers
might review the main points or summarize for the contents to
know if they understand what they read.
Some researchers (Bock, 1993; Keene & Zimmermann, 1997;
El-Koumy, 2004) mentioned that reading strategies can be di-
vided into cognitive and metacognitive styles. Cognitive strat-
egy meant readers had interaction with contents by using
strategies to help them understand the contents. Cognitive
strategies included visualizing, predicting, scanning, summa-
rizing, analyzing, making connection, underlining, and using
mnemonics, etc. El-Koumy (2004) stated that, “Metacognitive
strategy-often referred to as self-regulation strategies-refers to
the reader’s knowledge about the executive processes he or she
employs before, during, and after reading” (p. 16). They men-
tioned there were three main strategies in this area: planning,
self-monitoring, and self-assessment. Dutta (as cited in El-
Koumy, 2004) described that planning was used by readers to
make a comprehensive plan to understand the contents. Glazer
(as cited in El-Koumy, 2004) indicated that, “self monitoring-or
comprehension monitoring as it is often called-refers to the
readers’ regulation of his or her own comprehension during
reading” (p. 19). Schunk (1997) mentioned that metacognitive
strategy helped students check and adjust their reading strate-
gies for failure comprehension. Shoemaker (as cited in El-
Koumy, 2004) described self-assessment helped readers to
monitor and adjust their strategic thinking in literacy learning.
According to the reading styles that Carrell (1989) mentioned,
he divided reading strategies into repair, effective, and confi-
dent strategies. Repair strategy helped readers to understand the
contents when they did not have strong language ability, such
as using the context or the meaning of the sentence to solve
their vocabulary problem when they faced a new word during
their reading process. Effective strategy meant readers used
some strategies to help them read effectively during their read-
ing process, such as asking someone, taking notes, highlighting,
and summarizing, etc. Confident strategy helped readers to
decrease their fearfulness or increase their interest to read, in-
cluding reviewing the article, predicting the contents, and over-
view the table of contents. These strategies could help readers
to get new information and combine their own knowledge to
promote the understanding and memorizing of contents. There-
fore, the use of effective strategies could help readers think and
assist them to know how and when to solve their reading prob-
lems by their own knowledge (Pressley et al., 1989).
Carter & McGinnis (1967) described that the purpose of
reading is to gain the enjoyment and information from written
language. Reading is a developmental process in both of think-
ing and learning. It is an important way to communicate with
others and can be developed throughout life. Learning to read is
influenced by the individual’s level of physical and psycho-
logical development and is influenced by one’s surrounding.
Reading needed more than the accumulation from different
skills. It is a manifestation of the whole personality of the
reader and his behavior. Reading was a meaningful activity to
find out, and explain the ideas from the writers. Therefore, this
meant that reading was a complex language skill that could not
be focused on a certain way in order to develop it.
When people read a text, they usually attempted to under-
stand the meaning of what they read by using the visual clues of
spelling, experience or background knowledge. Reading was an
active process, so readers must use their various abilities that
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