Critical reading strategies among English literature students at a Malaysian institute of higher learning

Abstract

Despite the importance of critical reading in tertiary education, many ESL students are often passive consumers of texts, not questioning what they read and sometimes unable to read critically. The main aim of this study was to explore Malaysian university students’ use of six specific critical reading strategies, based on Facione (2013): interpretation, analysis, inference, evaluation, explanation and self-regulation, in the reading of two English literary texts. This study also aimed to investigate students’ perceptions of reading literature texts in English. Data were collected through a qualitative approach incorporating a questionnaire, a think-aloud protocol involving a reading session and a retrospective interview, and a semi-structured interview. The results of this study show that the participants made varying use of combinations of the six critical reading strategies to help them understand literary texts, however, most participants did not use the evaluation strategy. This finding indicates a need for specific teaching of all these critical reading strategies. The results from the interviews suggest that these participants have little idea of what critical reading is or how to be a critical reader; even though they used critical reading strategies, they appear to be unaware of their use of these strategies.