Exploring teachers‟ attitudes towards and practice in cognitive reading strategies instruction, the study specifically focused on teachers‟ beliefs about cognitive reading strategies and the extent their beliefs correspond to their self-reported instructional practices. Furthermore, the cognitive reading strategies teachers actually instruct at classrooms together with factors affecting such instructional practice were also taken into consideration.
All teachers in the target school found themselves familiar to the reading strategies.
They were, to some extent, aware of what the reading strategies are and why they need to teach them. All of them highly appreciate the strong help of the reading strategy instruction in enhancing students‟ understanding of the text, sub-skills developments, enjoyment of the texts and test preparation. However, some teachers did not recognize its importance on students‟ autonomous learning.
Considering the importance of each cognitive reading strategy, most were evaluated to be important to teach students except some strategies with considerable doubt (predicting in pre-reading, making inferences and mapping the text in while- reading, evaluating and drawing conclusions in post-reading). Among them, the most important strategies to be instructed were activating already-known knowledge in pre-reading, skimming and scanning in while-reading and summarizing in post- reading. The teachers attached the most importance to the pre-reading strategies, less important were the while-reading strategies and the post-reading strategies as the least important.
With regard to the second research question, there was a positive correlation between teacher's belief about the importance of the reading strategies in teaching practices and their self-reported classroom practices of reading strategy instruction.
However, generally the frequencies of strategies being instructed in the teaching practices were not as high as their evaluated importance.
(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).Teacher’s.attitudes.towards.and.practice.in.cognitive.reading.strategies.instruction(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).Teacher’s.attitudes.towards.and.practice.in.cognitive.reading.strategies.instruction(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).Teacher’s.attitudes.towards.and.practice.in.cognitive.reading.strategies.instruction(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).Teacher’s.attitudes.towards.and.practice.in.cognitive.reading.strategies.instruction(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).Teacher’s.attitudes.towards.and.practice.in.cognitive.reading.strategies.instruction(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).Teacher’s.attitudes.towards.and.practice.in.cognitive.reading.strategies.instruction(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).Teacher’s.attitudes.towards.and.practice.in.cognitive.reading.strategies.instruction(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).Teacher’s.attitudes.towards.and.practice.in.cognitive.reading.strategies.instruction
Concerning the third research question, the findings of the study showed that teacher‟s actual classroom instruction of reading strategies was observed not to be as frequent as their self-reported. In other words, there was a discrepancy between what teachers reported in the questionnaire and real practice. One possibility can explain this mismatch is that teachers tended to present themselves in a more favorable light in answering the questionnaire, as it is human nature to portray ourselves in the most positive manner (Mohammed, 2006). However, those reported to be more frequently instructed still called more teacher‟s attention than the others at classrooms. Specifically, teachers tended to instruct certain strategies more than the others in pre-, while-, and post- reading such as activating, previewing the text, identifying text structure (pre-reading strategies), skimming, scanning, guessing the meaning of the word from the context, questioning, note-taking (while-reading strategies), and summarizing (post-reading strategies). Effective reading strategies such as predicting, mapping, making inferences, evaluating and drawing conclusions were less frequently used.
Among the pre-reading, the while-reading and the post-reading strategies, teachers made the most instruction of pre-reading strategies, followed by while-reading strategies and the least of post-reading ones. The possible explanation for this inequality might be that pre-reading strategies were more emphasized in the course books. During the interviews, it was seen that participants who perceived themselves „very‟ familiar with the concept of reading strategies made more use of the while reading strategies than the teacher who perceived herself „slightly‟
familiar with the concept of reading strategies.
In addition, the least use of the post-reading strategies may be traced back to teachers‟ beliefs. As it was revealed in the questionnaire, teachers placed less value on these strategies in comparison with the other two categories. This may be further explained to be resulted from teacher‟s unfamiliarity with these strategies or contextual constraints.
(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).Teacher’s.attitudes.towards.and.practice.in.cognitive.reading.strategies.instruction(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).Teacher’s.attitudes.towards.and.practice.in.cognitive.reading.strategies.instruction(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).Teacher’s.attitudes.towards.and.practice.in.cognitive.reading.strategies.instruction(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).Teacher’s.attitudes.towards.and.practice.in.cognitive.reading.strategies.instruction(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).Teacher’s.attitudes.towards.and.practice.in.cognitive.reading.strategies.instruction(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).Teacher’s.attitudes.towards.and.practice.in.cognitive.reading.strategies.instruction(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).Teacher’s.attitudes.towards.and.practice.in.cognitive.reading.strategies.instruction(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).Teacher’s.attitudes.towards.and.practice.in.cognitive.reading.strategies.instruction
In terms of the fourth research question, teachers‟ age, qualifications and years of experience did not exert significant influence on their instruction of the reading strategies. Some other factors were the constraints of the reading texts in the course book that proposed teachers certain visuals, questions or strategies to guide.
Although the participants did not strongly agree that the reading strategies presented in the course books were well-designed, almost all of the teachers reported making use of titles, pictures and comprehension questions in the course books and relied on the strategies suggested by the books. The preparation for exams also acted as another barrier that prevented teachers from enacting their beliefs. Written tests of comprehension questions at high school often necessitate teachers to instruct students “survival” strategies of skimming, scanning and guessing new words.
Regarding the contextual factors, the limit of time and the different requirements from classes of different proficiency levels were mentioned. Students‟ motivation and the boredom of reading materials were also emphasized. Teachers‟ beliefs, which formed the basis of the way the teacher approached to reading instruction, was another important factor. Alternative models of teaching reading may have not yet fully absorbed by teachers in the constraints of existing traditional beliefs of language teaching.