Reading strategies and approaches to learning of bilingual primary school pupils

The research reported here investigated primary school pupils’ use of reading strategies. The study differed from most of the previous studies on reading strategies in that (1) the participants were young bilinguals in multicultural Singapore; (2) the data were examined within the Student Approaches to Learning (SAL) framework developed by John Biggs (1993). Analyses of think-aloud data revealed that successful pupils made more frequent use of deep-level processing strategies (e.g. inferencing, prediction, reconstruction, questioning of the text) while less successful pupils more often deployed surface-level processing strategies (e.g. paraphrasing, re-reading, questioning the meaning of a word or phrase). The findings suggest that children’s reading efficacy is affected by their use of learning strategies and that teachers should integrate the training of deep level reading strategies into their reading instruction. They should direct their pupils’ attention towards the intentional content of the reading material (what is signified) rather than towards learning the text itself (the sign) in their actual teaching practice.