Reported Reading Strategies of Iraqi Graduate Students Studying in Us Universities

Abstract

Reading is an important academic skill that college students need to master if they want to succeed in their academic programs. Traditionally, reading is the process whereby readers look at a written text and try to understand its content. Currently, researchers define reading as a cognitive process in which readers use their prior knowledge and reading strategies to grasp a written text (Sheorey &Mokhtari, 2001). Current studies in second/foreign language reading research have focused on reading strategies that learners use to comprehend English-language academic texts while reading (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2004; Al-Nujudi, 2003; Alsheikh, 2002; Malcolm, 2009). Reading strategies or individuals' comprehension techniques are now recognized as vital to successful reading comprehension and make the distinction between skilled and unskilled reading. The purpose of this study was to report Iraqi graduate students' (studying in the US) perceived reading strategy use when reading English-language academic texts and to determine if gender differences affect the research subjects' reading strategies use. The researcher used a modified version of the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) (Mokhtari &Sheorey, 2002) to research 115 Iraqi participants' perceived reading strategies use. The study results revealed that Iraqi participants reported using global strategies more frequently than problem-solving and support strategies. Also, a T-test revealed no statistically significant differences between the overall mean use of using strategies male and female participants reported. The results suggest that Iraq graduate students (studying in US universities) are aware of arsenal of reading strategies and they are "skilled readers" who know how to use various reading strategies "effectively" for successful comprehension. Moreover, although gender did not have an impact on the perceived general reading strategies used by Iraqi participants , the females sample number was small (N=32) and thus cannot be used for making accurate calculations and conclusions about whether gender affected strategy use.