THE PERCEIVED CHALLENGES IN READING OF YOUNG LEARNERS

Abstract

Reading is deemed to play a key role in the learning of English as a second language (ESL) among rural learners who have limited opportunities to hear or speak the language. However, they often come to ESL classrooms with the ability to read the text fluently, yet fully comprehend it. The past literature illuminate that these less skilled readers can be taught to employ appropriate reading strategies to construct the meaning from the text, and eventually aid their comprehension. Henceforth, this action research was conducted to explore how the twelve-week explicit strategy instruction via scaffolding approach helps improve eleven. The findings of this study revealed that all the some strategies play their own role in helping the participants to become active in creating meaning from the texts given, and thus enhancing their reading comprehension. Besides, the learners believe that the use of the strategies learnt improves their reading comprehension, promotes their higher order thinking skills, as well as motivates them to read. It is recommended that the explicit strategy instruction can be incorporated in teaching comprehension to primary ESL learners to aid their reading comprehension. The present paper is a  report  on  a  small  classroom  based  research  study.    The  teacher-researcher assigned  two  passages  dealing  with  two  different  social  issues  and  set  in  two different contexts, i.e., foreign and local, for  comprehension  to  the  students  in  the classroom. The classroom experience indicated that activating and building on the students’ background  knowledge  did  help  in  facilitating  their  reading comprehension  skills.  The  paper  thus  recommends  it  as  an  effective  strategy  to develop the young learners’ reading comprehension skills.