Reading strategies: Caught or taught?

The objective of this study was to investigate the reading methods students brought with them to the university. In the process, it also attempts to provide an answer to the question about whether reading strategies are caught or taught. It is generally assumed that since students ‘can’ read, they should know ‘how to read’ and that they are bound to pick up the necessary reading skills along their academic path. This study is based on the premise that while students do pick up some of these skills, this does not necessarily make them strategic readers. The study advocates explicit teaching of reading strategies. It attempted to examine some of these skills that the students had acquired. Data was collected using both oral and written instruments, such as the think-aloud protocol and written answers respectively. They were examined for evidence of local/content, global/metacogintive and genre/ discourse reading strategies. Both qualitative and quantitative data show a dominant use of local and content-based reading skills as opposed to other strategies. Skills refer to repeated practice or simple directives and connote an automatic, mechanical and consistent cognitive behaviour. Strategies are procedural, purposeful, effortful, willful, essential, and facilitative in nature (Alexander, Graham and Harris, 1998). Implications for teaching are suggested.