Students‟ Awareness, Practices and Challenges of Reading Comprehension Strategy use: Grade Ten Students at Mettu Secondary School in Focus

Abstract

This study aimed at investigating students’ awareness, practices and challenges of reading comprehension strategies used by grade 10 students at Mettu secondary school. To achieve this, a descriptive case study method was employed. The participants of the study were grade ten students for the 2022 academic year and grade ten English language teachers in the school under investigation. Out of 232 grade 10 students in the school, 70 of them were selected through a simple random sampling technique whereas two teachers participants were selected by purposive sampling technique. To collect relevant data, three instruments of data collection: questionnaire, interview and observation were used. Data collected through questionnaire was analyzed quantitatively by making use of frequency percentages and mean values. On the other hand, data gathered via interviews and classroom observation were analyzed qualitatively. The findings of the study depicted that the students’ awareness of different reading comprehension strategies is at a low level. Similarly, their practices of using the strategies were poor. Furthermore, the study revealed that the nature of the reading comprehension activities/tasks and lack of awareness of reading comprehension strategies were among the challenges which have been hindering students’ not to practice varied reading comprehension strategies. Based on the major findings of the study, it is concluded that the students’ were not effectively exposed to reading comprehension strategy use neither explicitly nor implicitly. In conclusion, recommendations were forwarded in order to boost students’ awareness and practices of using different reading comprehension strategies. Among these, teachers should model and explain the strategies and they are expected to design tasks and activities that suit their students’ needs instead of being a servant of students’ textbooks. Moreover, they should provide‘scaffolding’ rather than making students rely on them forevery classroom episode. Furthermore, students should exercise their responsibility as active readers. Finally, concerned officials have to organize practical refreshment training on how reading comprehension strategies are best taught at secondary school.