Abstract

The ability to read academic texts effectively is considered to be one of the most important skills that undergraduates need to acquire. Academic reading, requiring in-depth comprehension, involves a complex integration of the students’ prior knowledge, language proficiency and their metacognitive strategies. The strategies English for Academic Purposes students use while reading indicate which textual cues they attend, how they make sense of what they read, what they do when they do not understand. In order to identify students’ cognitive and metacognitive strategies and to investigate their personal strategies employed in reading authentic academic texts, instruments used for data collection are: questionnaires and interviews. These two instruments were used to gather data as we believe that using a variety of techniques provides a more valid and in depth view. The questionnaires, designed for the purpose of gaining insights into the situation, were distributed to 172 second semester students attending the departments of a) primary education b) early – childhood at the Florina Pedagogical School. Semi-structured interviews with 15 volunteer students were used to gain more meaningful insights of the questionnaires.

The study hopes to contribute to our understanding of what students know about their reading strategies and what makes reading difficult. This would help them distinguish between the strategies that are appropriate or inappropriate for specific reading situation and help them develop independent-autonomous reading habits. The study is limited in its scope and therefore it should not be generalized at this stage, but it identifies areas for further investigation.