An Inquiry into Reading Comprehension Strategies through Think-aloud Protocols

Asking comprehension questions might reveal how much readers have
understood of a given text, but such a measure is hardly sufficient to determine
how the readers have actually processed the text in their minds. For the purpose
of obtaining direct insight into how EFL .readers search for meaning and what
kinds of reading comprehension strategies they possess and utilize during the
act of reading, the author collected think-aloud protocols of 43 Japanese university
students recorded on cassette tapes and examined the data, using the broad
categories of top-down processing and bottom-up processing with accompanying
sub-categories. This article reports the method of classifying the data, analyzes
the characteristics of strategies used by the subjects, and investigates the
relationship between strategy use and reading comprehension ability shown in
the results of semester examinations. Finally, it considers the implications of this
data for teaching reading to Japanese university students.