Pre-Service English Language Teachers’ Use of Reading Comprehension Strategies

Abstract

Reading is an essential skill that every student needs to acquire since most of the information needed for academic development is presented in written textual materials. Readers need to make use of a variety of reading strategies to assist them with decoding and comprehending texts of various formats – print, visual, electronic screens or digital and at different levels of difficulty. This study identified the reading strategies used by pre-service English language teachers. Data was collected from one hundred and eighty-six (186) undergraduates enrolled in English language education programme in two universities in Delta and Edo states in Nigeria. The data was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics, namely, mean standard deviation and independent sample t-test. The results indicated that the students reported a high use of reading strategies. The findings of this study also revealed that there was no significant gender difference in pre-service English language teachers’ use of reading strategies as both male and female students reported high use of reading strategies. Students in the third year of the programme (300 level) reported higher use of reading strategies than those in the fourth year of the programme (400 level). The findings however, revealed no significant difference in reading comprehension scores between moderate and high reading strategy users.