A Comparison of comprehension strategies of successful and less-successful readers

This study was conducted in order to find out and compare the reading comprehension strategies of Turkish University students designated as successful and less-successful readers. In order to achieve this goal, first year students at Uludağ University, Education Faculty, English Language Teaching Department were given a placement test. Pre-intermediate level students were chosen for the study. They were given two different reading comprehension passages followed by multiple choice questions, and asked to think aloud during the reading sessions. These processes were tape- recorded. From the results of the multiple choice questions, five successful and five less-successful readers were chosen as subjects. The study was planned with the phases of preparing the necessary material in order to collect data, finding out the strategies used by the students, analysing the gathered data, and explaining the results. Tape- recordings of the think-aloud processes, multiple choice tests and a strategy questionnaire were used in collecting data. The study was concluded by comparing the comprehension strategies of successful and less-successful readers.