The Strategic Reading of Arabic Native Speakers in English

This book presents a study that explored the metacognitive reading strategies used by Arabic native speakers when reading in Arabic and English. The study aimed at finding out 1) the strategies that Arabic native speakers report using in English and Arabic,2) the strategies they actually use in reading the two languages, and 3) the conditions under which the use of these strategies vary across the two languages. The participants' metacognitive reading strategies was assessed by using the Survey of Reading Strategies(SORS) (Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2002) while their actual strategies use was identified through the use of a think-aloud protocol. The results revealed five major findings. First, all the participants reported using all the SORS strategies. Second, there were statistically significant differences in the strategies reported in English and Arabic. Third, some strategies were actually used more often than others. Fourth, think- aloud showed that the participants actually used more than half of the strategies when they read in English. Finally, the variations in reported use revealed that more strategies were used in English than in Arabic.