Exploring reading in third-year secondary school students learning English as a foreign language in Libya

Abstract

This study was proposed to explore the Libyan secondary school students’ cognitive and metacognitive reading processes with respect to what ways of reading they followed when reading in English and what types of reading use strategies they employed, Six Libyan secondary school students were voluntarily invited to take part in the study. The data was collected using the think-aloud protocol after the students had been involved in several training sessions on how to use the protocol before they performed the real tasks. The researcher discussed the protocol providing more details on some reading studies where the commentators have used the protocol successfully. The protocol outcomes revealed that the participants have used many types of reading use strategies encompassing direct strategies: memory, cognitive, and compensatory strategies and indirect strategies: comprising metacognitive, affective, and social strategies. The findings also showed that the protocol was a good research instruments for provided a valuable access to students’ mental processes while they were problemsolving their tasks.