The Use of reading comprehension strategies in an EFL class

Abstract

The following article emerges from the educative practice applied in a secondary school, with students of 2nd grade in the scholar period 2018-2019. Through the interaction and observation with the groups I detected the opportunity to improve the ability of reading and writing according to the results obtained from the diagnostic exams of English and Spanish subjects. Considering this need, in this project I set the objective of improving the reading skills of students, which I developed with the use of different reading comprehension strategies such as predicting, scanning, skimming and getting the meaning from the context.

I applied these strategies in a didactic sequence that consisted of five classes with 22 students. The investigation that I did was in an applied model and the methodology that I applied was investigation-action. In the class I applied the planning model of “Presentation, Practice and Production”, emphasizing the application of the strategies in the presentation and practice stages.

The results obtained from the strategies that I applied were: 12 from 22 students with good development in scanning; 4 students from 22 with a good development in getting the meaning from the context and 13 students from 22 with a fair development in predicting. With the analysis of these strategies I conclude that students achieved a very low progress with the learners because of the issues that emerged since the context that students are placed in, the lack of discipline and motivation that students did not have.