Discourse Socialization of a Group of Korean IELP Students through the Use of Reading...

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English Teaching, Vol. 62, No. 1, Spring 2007

Discourse Socialization of a Group of Korean IELP Students through the Use of Reading Strategies

Sun-Young Kim (Kyung Hee University)

Kim, Sun-Young. (2006). Discourse Socialization of a Group of Korean IELP Students through the Use of Reading Strategies. English Teaching, 62(1), 75-103.

This paper explores the discourse socialization of a group of Korean Intensive English Language Program (IELP) students through the use of reading strategies by focusing on one type of classroom activity, mini-lessons of TOEFL readings. From a language socialization perspective, a six-month classroom ethnographic study explored how Korean students holding different beliefs about second language (L2) learning developed reading strategies, as a tool in the socialization process, through strategic interaction with peers and a teacher during mini-lessons. Data were collected mainly from classroom observation, interviews, tape-recordings, and survey. The findings showed that a group of Korean students were gradually socialized into developing appropriate reading strategies specific to them by communicating their expertise and difficulties, by strategically involving peers in their strategic evaluation processes, and by internalizing these strategies outside of class. However, ways of developing reading strategies differed widely across the students in the different ranges of beliefs. This study argues that acquiring academic discourse through socialization into reading strategies should be understood as a social process where L2 learners negotiate their expertise and difficulties on a bi-directional continuum of expert-novice interaction.

I. INTRODUCTION The present study examines academic discourse socialization of a group of Korean

students in Intensive English Language Program (IELP) by focusing on the way of using “reading strategies” (i.e., learner’s strategic knowledge and skills used in performing specific reading tasks). From a discourse socialization perspective, my study addresses how participants possessing different beliefs about second language (L2) learning develop the reading strategies through “interaction with peers and a teacher.” Through one type of class activity (i.e., a mini-lesson of reading comprehension (R/C) led by a learner) carefully designed to expose reading strategies used by group members, each student is expected to

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have an opportunity to learn the reading strategies since this activity provides an environment that suggests alternative strategies for respective learners. In this approach, students are exposed to considerable learning situations where strategic interaction plays an important role in preparing for the R/C section of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL).

I trace the process of developing the reading strategies used by participants holding different “personal beliefs about L2 learning” (i.e., learner’s perception on language learning often shaped by prior learning experiences or environment) rather than focus on the types of strategies (i.e., strategy classification or the number of strategies).1 The specific purpose is to understand how Korean IELP students holding different beliefs acquire academic discourse when exposed to an opportunity to learn alternative reading strategies. Although many studies have explored the academic discourse socialization of L2 students through either writing (Atkinson & Ramanathan, 1995; Spack, 1997) or oral activities (Morita, 2000; Schecter & Bayley, 2004; Yanagisawa, 2005), few studies have explored the issue of academic discourse socialization by focusing on the use of reading strategies. The term “socialization” refers to the process by which new comers are apprenticed into the expectations of given sociocultural group (Morita, 2000; Ochs, 1988, 2002; Schecter & Bayley, 2004; Watson-Gegeo & Nielson, 2003). In their daily academic life, IELP students are normally required to pass TOEFL to enter the university in the US, and expected to be able to function adequately in a university environment.

In the context of the IELP classroom, teachers often assume the existence of good strategies available to every learner and provide strategy instruction for their students without caution. However, it is very likely to be misleading since some strategies are differentially appropriate for individual learners. In other words, not all learners will benefit from each and every strategy, and some learners will become frustrated and abandon the perceived inappropriate strategy. Unlike unidirectional strategy instruction taught by a teacher, a mini-lesson (i.e., preparing for, teaching, and discussing the assigned TOEFL reading) in which learners are exposed to the full range of reading strategies helps learners evaluate and develop alternative strategies applicable to their L2 learning through strategic interaction with peers and a teacher. As an attempt to get insights into the reading strategy development, this study explores how a group of Korean IELP students develop reading strategies specific to them over the course of the classroom practices.

1 O’Malley (1983) suggested that there were three kinds of strategies (i.e., learning strategies,

communication strategies, and social strategies. On the other hand, Rubin (1981) further classified learning strategies as six categories: clarification/verification, guessing/inductive inferrencing, deductive reasoning, practice, memorization, and monitoring.

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1. Theoretical Framework In the context of English as a second language learning, the strategies once identified as

good strategies may be no longer appropriate ones if the way of using learning strategies is culture-specific and is shaped by personal beliefs about L2 learning. Similarly, Politzer & McGroarty (1985), in their qualitative study, demonstrated that good learning strategies might be differentially appropriate for various types of skills and learner behavior. In the field of second language acquisition, Ellis (1994) rightly stressed the needs for ethnographic study into how a learner develops the ability to deploy learning strategies over time. He emphasized the importance of understanding learning strategies as a dynamic process where learners reflect their beliefs in their strategy use.

A theoretical aspect framing this study is language socialization (Duff, 1995, 2000; Morita, 2000; Oches, 1988, 2002; Schecter & Bayley, 1997, 2004; Watson-Gegeo, 2004). Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research has been criticized for a lack of attention to the social aspects of language learning (Firth & Wagner, 1997). Recently, researchers have begun employing the language socialization perspective to bring social factors into SLA research. Language socialization emphasizes the interdependence of the acquisition of language and sociocultural knowledge through interaction and attempts to understand the process of becoming a competent member of society through language activities.

The centrality of this notion is the concept of activities. While classroom activities should provide an environment that involves adult ESL learners in considerable learning situations, the ESL classroom has to be small enough to meet diverse interests of adult L2 learners and should be appropriately structured to encourage learners’ participation. In evaluating the traditional classroom (i.e., a large IELP classroom) as an appropriate language socialization place, Duff (2000) demonstrated that classroom practice could create barriers to successful participation and stressed the fundamental tension that existed between the teacher’s need to engage all students and to ensure the participation of inactive learners. To understand reading strategies as a social process, it is important to create a participatory climate that is less hierarchical than the climate produced by traditional approaches. In this context, using small groups (Brookfield, 1992; Draves, 1997; Yanagisawa, 2005) in adult ESL learning promotes teamwork and encourages cooperation among members. My ESL reading class emphasized the importance of learning from peers and allowed all the participants to be involved in discussion through mini-lessons where they could share various aspects of reading strategies and assume a variety of roles (i.e., novices or experts).

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2. Research Questions Unlike many studies (Atkinson & Ramanathan, 1995; Morita, 2000: Prior, 1994; Spack,

1997; Watson-Gegeo, 2004; Yanagisawa, 2005) that have explored the L2 socialization through oral and written discourses, this paper is concerned with the issue of academic discourse socialization by focusing on the use of reading strategies. The research questions addressed here are as follows:

1. How do learner’s beliefs about learning influence the use of reading strategies in preparing for the R/C section of the TOEFL?

2. How do students possessing different beliefs about L2 learning develop reading strategies specific to them over the course of the mini-lessons led by learners?

3. Literature Review

L2 reading is an active, complex process of comprehending written language

encompassing many different sub-skills, and no researchers in L2 reading have ignored the usefulness of the appropriate reading strategies in enhancing comprehension competence. The difficulty of the reading strategy instruction, however, is in line with an attempt to teach appropriate strategies even without insights into the paths L2 learners take to approach their goals. The development of reading strategy instruction is linked to the theories of reading development (i.e., bottom-up processing, top-down processing, or interactive approaches), which do not account for the role played by social interaction between peers and a teacher. Since the interactive approach to reading that draws on schema theory views reading as a meaning-making process involving an interaction between the learner and the text, the scope of an interaction is limited to the individual learner him/herself (Grabe, 1991; Hudson, 1998).

In the context of self-interaction, researches (Bremner, 1998; Chamot & O’Malley, 1984; Green & Oxford, 1995; O’Malley et al., 1985; Padron, 1991; Politzer & McGroarty, 1985; Skehan, 1989) assumed the existence of the universal reading strategies applicable to every learner. Those typical strategy-training studies based on an “encapsulated instruction” emphasized the effectiveness of the strategy instruction and their systematic application to L2 reading process. The mixed results suggest the nature of L2 reading strategies that could not be generalized across individual learners. These studies also inform that it may not be possible to teach appropriate strategies without insights into learner-specific approaches to the strategy use. More specifically, the strategies of the good language learner may not be immediately transferable if good reading strategies are differentially appropriate for various types of skills and learner behavior (Gillette, 1994). Ellis (1994) rightly stressed the needs for ethnographic study into how a learner develops


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the ability to deploy learning strategies over time. He emphasized the importance of understanding reading strategies as a dynamic process where learners reflect their beliefs in their strategy use.

Recent studies (Foorman & Torgesen, 2001; Fuchs et al., 1997; Ghaith, 2003; Klinger & Schumm, 1998; Klinger & Vaughn, 1996, 2000; Liang et al., 1998; O’Connor & Jenkins, 1996) on L2 reading can be understood as an attempt to accommodate sociocultural dimensions of reading strategy development, such as cooperative learning with strategy instruction, portfolio approach, and peer tutoring. Within this paradigm, L2 reading in an academic setting is viewed as an interactive process that takes into account social interaction, and L2 classroom as a social place sharing various aspects of reading strategies and to communicate their relative expertise and difficulties, and the strategy development as the outcome of both an individual and a social process. Despite their attempt to integrate reading strategy instruction to interaction dimensions, these performance-oriented studies provide a limited description about the dynamics in the strategy development where the learners self-access, reflect on various aspects of strategies, and develop the appropriate reading strategies. To understand the reading strategy development as a dynamic process where strategic interaction among learners plays an important role, the socio-cultural dimensions of classroom interaction should be seriously taken into accounts in the study of L2 reading strategies.

From a sociocultural perspective (Gee, 1990, 1992; Street, 1993), the early studies on reading strategy instruction with cooperative learning are characterized as “intervention studies” that investigated the effectiveness of the classroom interaction on the reading strategy development and thus reading comprehension. Later, the studies in this area were improved by the researchers’ attempts to see the process as well as the outcomes. Stevens et al. (1991), in their experimental study involving fourth-grade students from ethnically diverse schools, randomly assigned the students to three groups (i.e., Cooperative Group with strategy instruction, Direct Strategy Instruction, and No Instruction Group), and concluded that no significant difference between the first two groups was found.

Contrarily, Klinger and Schumm (1998) and Klinger and Vaughn (2000), in similar studies, reported the results in favor of the cooperative learning with the strategy instruction. They improved the limitation of the studies above by looking at both process and outcomes in their studies using a mixed methods approach (quantitative-qualitative method). Similarly, Klinger and Vaughn (2000) showed how cooperative learning method could help learners to acquire appropriate reading strategies through peer L2 interaction (group work). Their modeling of teaching reading strategies as a new approach leads us to think about the importance of sociocultural aspects of reading strategies.

However, the studies on reading strategy instruction with cooperative learning have difficulties in explaining the multiple learning situations shaped by many ways of

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interaction going awry. Since strategic learners in an academic setting often engage in critical dialogs (controlled conversation with specific purpose and intention) to develop the appropriate strategies, there are many ways patterns of interaction can go awry. The strategic dimensions of interaction in which the students help each other while working in small group can vary in terms of their willingness to seek and provide help. As Liang et al. (1998) address in their literature review on cooperative leaning in L2 classroom, some problems of the current cooperative learning in ESL classes are related to the issue of why interaction opportunities in L2 reading class are sometimes promoted and constrained in other times by constantly changing interactional dynamics. Jacob et al. (1996) and O’Connor and Jenkins (1996) clearly illustrated this point. They found a wide range of opportunities available to L2 learners during the interaction. However, these opportunities occurred relatively infrequently since many were skewed toward simple aspects of L2 learning or since learners withdrew from group processes.

As an alternative approach to the direct strategy instruction, or ‘portfolio approach,’ Donato and McCormick (1994) and Gillette (1994), in their longitudinal study, employed the portfolio technique to examine the impact of performance-based portfolios on the development of learning strategies. Instead of proving explicit strategy training, they required a group of students to document and reflect on their own growth. They concluded that the portfolios provided the longitudinal evidence of growth in strategy use, suggesting that the primary role of a teacher is to set up the strategic environment (activity) where the learners are exposed to considerable learning situations. To understand the reading strategy development as a dynamic process where strategic interaction among learners plays an important role, classroom interaction should be viewed as an essential part of the reading strategy development. Especially, in the context of ESL reading classroom, socialization aspects of reading strategy development should be able to account for strategic dimensions of interaction, which has been ignored in L2 socialization studies. This calls for further research to examine reading strategy development as a socialization process into the classroom practice.

4. Context of the Mini-Lesson as a Social Place

I describe the role a mini-lesson played as a social place to negotiate expertise and

difficulties in the reading classroom. Korean IELP students who were preparing for the TOEFL were expected to gradually learn how to use the reading strategies by engaging in this mini-lesson: 1) by preparing for their mini-lessons, 2) by observing and performing their mini-lessons, and 3) by discussing each other’s perspective and strategy use.


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1) Preparing for the Mini-Lessons The role of the first part of a mini-lesson (i.e., preparation) was to encourage a student to

be an active learner through commitment. Once the reading material was assigned, the students prepared for their presentation in various ways. At this stage, the students reflected their own ways of preparing for the assigned reading rather than others’ ways, showing what they had done previously in studying the reading influenced their preparation. The total time, for example, devoted to preparing for a mini-lesson varied considerably depending on the individual student. Some students (2/5) spent less than 30 minutes, while the others (3/5) spent approximately more than one hour; surprisingly, one of the students spent 2 or 3 hours preparing for a single assigned TOEFL reading. In preparing for their lessons, all the Korean students considered a preparation for the mini-lesson as an essential part of the learning practices.

2) Performing and Observing the Mini-Lessons

Unlike formal presentations conducted in a university classroom, the mini-lesson, by

nature, was informal and functioned as a means to help students’ TOEFL preparation. During the presentation, both a presenter and observers tended to focus on finding the correct answer rather than on the approaches taken by a presenter, since ways of using strategies were not readily observed without the presenter’s direct explanation. Although observing the reading strategies used by the presenter was not satisfactory, this section provided information about how learners used presentation strategies. Interestingly, as time passed, all the students tended to present their lessons in similar ways. Korean IELP students, who had little prior experience of presentation either in Korea or in language classroom in the US, became aware of what approaches were not well received by their audience. For example, specifying organization types (i.e., comparison, chronicle passage, etc.), clarifying main ideas and an overall summary and solving the problem using exact information contained in the passage were considered critical by the students. It suggests that these reading behaviors shared by typical Korean learners seem to be shaped by their experiences in language learning under the test-oriented culture.

During the presentation, the students usually paid more attention to the correctness of the answer explained by the presenter rather than to what strategy worked and what strategy did not. Since participants including the tutor could not observe what techniques the presenter used to solve the problems, they at most knew who was good at solving what types of questions.

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3) Engaging in Class Discussion Class discussion was the last part of the mini-lesson and provided the most valuable

information about the learners’ ways of using strategies. The role of class discussion was to expose learners to an opportunity to learn alternative reading strategies that might be applicable to them. During the discussion, all the students showed strong interest in sharing different opinions and perspectives and realized that there existed various approaches to solving the exactly same type of question in the TOEFL reading. The students indicated that they were mostly concerned about the effectiveness of alternative strategies that might be applicable for them.

II. METHOD To explore the research questions, I employed “a classroom ethnographic approach”

and observed a classroom environment where students engaged in mini-lessons led by each learner. Although the ethnographic method has not been used in many reading strategy studies, it enabled a researcher to pay close attention to cultural contexts and the insider’s perspective in studying reading strategies.

1. Participants and Setting

The five participants were selected from intermediate classes (level 4 in a 6-level

program) in IELP at an urban university and all were native Koreans who were preparing for TOEFL to enter university in the US. Four regular classes for the TOEFL reading were held for six months, and each class met for 1 hour (total 80 hours: 24 weeks). Each student provided five mini-lessons for a semester and one mini-lesson was performed per month. Each had studied in the US greater than six months but less than one year. Two female students planned to major in music and two male and one female students planned to major in business administration in university. The female teacher was a doctoral student in the Teaching English as a Second Language (TESOL) program at an urban university who had taught TOEFL reading classes for IELP students for two years.

Personal traits of the participants are reported in Table 1 below. As shown in Table 1, the students were quite comparable in terms of age (22 to 24) and years in the US (less than 1 year) while a range of belief scores (2.1 to 3.8) measured on a 5-point Likert scale differed widely across the students. The Computer-Based TOEFL scores ranged from 150 to 190. The recent TOEFL score was reported in the table below when the students had the multiple TOEFL scores. For the Korean students, some extra activities (i.e., watching TV


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or movies) they had enjoyed were also viewed as a part of English learning.

TABLE 1 Student Profiles

Student / Sex

Age/Years in US

Prospect Major

TOEFLScore

BeliefScore

Extra Learning Activity

Student A/Male 22 / 1.5 Business 180 2.4 Magazine, TV Student B/Female 24 / 0.5 Music 190 2.8 Newspaper, TV Student C/Male 22 / 1.5 Business 150 2.1 TV, Meet American

Student D/Female 22 / 0.5 Music 180 3.6 Movie, TV Student E/Female 23 / 1.5 Business 173 3.8 TV, Novel The five Korean learners, sharing common interests (i.e., obtaining a high TOEFL score

and functioning appropriately in the academic environment), felt that reading and writing skills were the ones most often neglected in their intermediate-level IELP classes. While my learners acknowledged that speaking and listening were the immediate needs in their lives, reading and writing were the areas in which they felt they needed the most practice. Unlike the typical reading class in a university ESL class, my reading class was structured to actively discuss the TOEFL readings by sharing learners’ perspectives and their approaches to solving reading comprehension problems through mini-lessons.

2. Data Collection and Procedure

1) Survey

In the first stage, a self-reporting survey was developed to identify learners’ beliefs about

L2 learning. This self-reporting survey was used to measure the levels of flexibility of learners’ beliefs in terms of two specific areas; the nature of language learning and learning strategies, from a less flexible continuum to a more flexible continuum. The survey assessed the levels of flexibility of learners’ beliefs in two sub-categories, and each sub-category consisted of 10 Likert-scale items (see Appendix B). Learners responded on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (‘Disagree or almost never true of me’) to 5 (‘Strongly agree or almost always true of me’). Each item in the survey was constructed in close consultation with ESL teachers from a variety of cultural backgrounds and professionals in the field of L2 education. Unlike the survey instrument, a ‘Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory’ (BALLI)2, which has been used mainly for item analyses, my survey instrument was intended to measure the degree to which learners viewed L2 learning on a

2 Horwits, E. K. (1983). Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory (BALLI), unpublished instrument,

The University of Texas Austin.

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less-more flexible continuum. Some survey items in BALLI appropriate to my research context were selectively used

in my survey instrument. Survey data were administrated at the beginning of a 16-week English course. The participants were asked to voluntarily take part in the survey in class. I as a researcher explained the procedure and responded to any question if required. All the students (n = 25) in my reading class, though not subjects in this study, participated in the survey because I used an average score obtained from the survey as a criterion value to identify 5 Korean students as possessing either less or more flexible beliefs. An average belief score of the class was 3.1 (in a 5-point Likert scale). 3 Korean students (students A, B, and C) who scored less than 3.1 were classified as possessing less flexible beliefs while 2 Korean students (students D and E) who obtained scores higher than 3.1 as having more flexible beliefs.

2) Qualitative Data

In the second stage of the study, qualitative data were collected during a six-month

period through three methods: interviews, class observation, and tape- recording. The ways the students used reading strategies and coped with difficulties in R/C activities were investigated in the following ways. First, I directly observed reading strategies described during the interviews. During the interviews, I asked the students the questions about the means they used to study for the R/C of the TOEFL, accessing valuable perspective on their approaches to studying the TOEFL reading. The partially structured interviews were tape-recorded and later transcribed. Interviews with the students were conducted using Korean (L1) to obtain more precise information from them. Second, all the mini-lessons led by the students were tape-recorded during a 16-week semester. Finally, persistent observation was recorded in fieldnotes. Since the first two parts of the mini-lesson (preparation and presentation) yielded limited information about the reading strategies used by the students, class observation was mainly drawn from the discussion part of the mini-lesson.

Each participant was required to prepare for, teach, and discuss the assigned reading. In class discussion as a part of mini-lesson, learners (both the presenter and observers) had an opportunity to talk about their own way of solving problems, being exposed to alternative reading strategies applicable to their L2 situations. Approximately one mini-lesson a month was assigned for each student. In total, there were 24 mini-lessons through the reading class. After each lesson, the teacher corrected any mistakes the learners had made. As a teacher researcher, I attended all the classes and observed all the class activities. However, my role as a teacher was limited to that of an assistant (close to observer) because classroom interaction eased the distinction between a teacher and the students. When


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mini-lessons tend to be teacher-directed, learners might have few opportunities to engage in active learning with observable reading strategies.

3. Data Analysis

The classroom research used multiple sources of data collected across individuals and

over time at multiple levels of analysis (Hagan, Kamberelis, & Segal, 1991; McGinley, 1992). I chose the R/C mini-lessons led by the students as a primary unit of analysis in my study for two reasons. First, the R/C section required comprehensive knowledge (i.e., ability to read, analyze, and use information to solve given problems). Second, the mini-lessons provided a strategic environment where students shared their perspectives on reading strategy use. This activity as the culturally constituted behavior is embedded in the theory of language socialization (Lave, 1988). In the following section, I present the approaches to data analysis involved in this study.

Processing survey data involves converting the respondents’ answers to numbers using a ‘coding procedure’ (Joliffe, 1986). A subject’s belief score was an average one of all the survey items (20 questions) measured on a 5-point Likert scale. Using a distribution of the scores of the individual students, I determined two ranges of beliefs that served as criterion values in the second stage. I used the mean score as a cut-off point to determine the two ranges of beliefs groups from a less-more flexible continuum.

Upon completion of data collection related to the mini-lessons, I analyzed the data according to several different schemes and conducted interpretive analyses using the Constant Comparison method (Dye et al., 2000; Patton, 1990). First, data analysis started right after I collected the data associated with the first set of mini-lessons. All the data from interviews, audio-tapings of classroom practices and classroom observations associated with the first mini-lesson were transcribed, reviewed, and coded; categories and related topics were established by classifying those data. Discourse data from the mini-lessons were also linked to those from interviews, survey, and other observations.

Second, once ways of engaging in classroom practices were identified through the analysis of the first set of mini-lesson data, these patterns were then used to generate subsequent data (Moje, 1996). This process of generating data was extended to the entire mini-lessons completed during the16-week semester. Through an ongoing process of collecting data, the patterns emerging from the data were constantly refined over time and compared across the students using the Constant Comparison analysis (Dye et al., 2000; Glaser & Strauss, 1967) of the data.

Third, data from all the sources were used to construct flowcharts for the participants (i.e., the four subsequent portfolios of each student corresponding to the four sets of mini-lessons). Those flowcharts formed a portfolio for each student and then were used to

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illustrate the chronology of reading strategy development. The constructed flowcharts over the 16-week semester were used as primary data for exploring the research questions. The flowcharts served as the baseline data for an analysis during the study. However, these flowcharts were not presented in the result section since the existing data obtained from the other methods were used to construct the flowcharts.

III. RESULTS In the following sections, the ways Korean IELP students in the different ranges of

beliefs developed reading strategies were categorized to describe the process of acquiring academic discourse through the use of reading strategies.

1. Reading Strategy Use in Connection to Learners’ Beliefs about L2 Learning

The question raised here concerns the influence that student beliefs may have on the

students’ use of reading strategies. Knowledge of students’ beliefs about L2 learning was an important step to understand their strategy use. Korean IELP students, on average, described reading strategies consistent with their beliefs although ways of using reading strategies differed widely across the students. In the survey designed to measure the levels of flexibility of the beliefs about L2 learning, the students who scored less than 3.1 (the mean score) in a 5 point-scale were classified as less flexible, while the students who scored greater than 3.1 were classified as more flexible. I acknowledge that the mean score used was not an objective criterion value, but a relative measure that was applied to my classroom research. According to this criterion, students A, B, and C were identified as possessing less flexible beliefs, with individual scores of 2.7, 2.5, and 2.8, respectively. Students D and E were identified as possessing more flexible beliefs, with corresponding scores of 3.3 and 3.8 respectively.

Table 2 summarizes reading strategies used by the groups possessing a different range of beliefs. To categorize the reading strategies reported in Table 2, the students’ reading behaviors described during the interview process and observed during the mini-lessons were analyzed. To classify the students into the two beliefs groups (i.e., the less flexible and the more flexible groups), a survey instrument was administrated. Since each survey item was structured using normal language, the students’ responses were not likely to be influenced by the terms used in the items.


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TABLE 2 The Use of Reading Strategies by the Students in Each Group

Beliefs Group Reading Strategy Use

Less Flexible Group

1. 2.

3.

Vocabulary: Listing words and idioms; Memorizing; Using dictionary; R/C Strategies: Transferring L2 using L1; Rereading; Note-takings; Making a reading summary; Analyzing the structure of passage Task-Taking Strategies: Using transition words to predict; Guessing unknown words; Eliminating restatement from question-items

More Flexible Group

1.

2.

3.

Vocabulary: Listing words and idioms; Memorizing; Using dictionary; Guessing; Getting the meaning in the sentence R/C Strategies: Transferring L2 using L1; Annotated reading; Fast reading; Scanning; Rereading; Note-takings: Making reading summaries; Keeping the meaning of the passage in mind while reading; Visualizing the reading content; Analyzing the structure of passage Task-Taking Strategies: Eliminating unreasonable choices; Using information contained in questions; Attacking the first and last paragraph only; Eliminate parenthesis when reading; Using transition word to predict; Guessing unknown words; Eliminating restatement from choices.

Note: The detailed descriptions about reading strategies above are reported in Table 3. An analysis from the survey and the first set of mini-lesson data showed that 5 Korean

students in each group differed widely in terms of patterns of using reading strategies in studying the R/C3 of the TOEFL. Nevertheless, the students in both beliefs groups tended to use the reading strategies consistent with their beliefs about L2 learning in that their uses of reading strategies were guided by their beliefs or prior experience of L2 learning.

As shown in Table 2, the students in each group differed in terms of ranges of reading strategies. The students possessing beliefs on a more flexible continuum (hereafter, more flexible group) were willing to explore learning opportunities available to them during the mini-lessons. They tended to use a wide range of reading strategies in various ways. On the contrary, the pattern of using reading strategies by the students in the less flexible group was quite stable in that they used a relatively limited range of reading strategies in a simplistic way. However, all the Korean students tended to be more flexible in applying reading strategies to their L2 learning as they knew how, where, when to use these strategies through the mini-lessons. Interestingly, some strategies, such as ‘Listing words and idioms,’ ‘Note-taking,’ and ‘Transferring L2 using L1,’ were shared by all the Korean students. The link between Korean students’ beliefs and the use of reading strategy is described in the following section. 3 The reading comprehension of the TOEFL test is designed to measure students’ ability to

comprehend the readings in three areas: the main idea question, vocabulary question, and reference/inference question. In particular, inference question asks them to predict or develop the meaning of the content. In vocabulary question type, students are expected to understand not only the definition of the word, but also the meaning of the word in the reading context. On the other hand, reference question tests learner’s ability to find a specific location of necessary information on the reading passage.

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1) Strategy Use by the Students Possessing Less Flexible Beliefs about L2 Learning Throughout the mini-lessons, the students possessing less flexible beliefs, on average,

described reading strategies consistent with their beliefs about L2 learning. What students thought about language learning could affect how they went about doing it. For example, students A and C, believing that vocabulary and grammar were the most important, made index cards (i.e., lists of words and idioms) before engaging in the readings, while student B, believing that practice was best for English learning, invested a considerable amount of time in repeating reading materials from the previous lectures. In addition, the students possessing less flexible beliefs tended to repeat a few reading strategies that they had used in the past, applying these strategies to their learning in the similar and simplistic ways regardless of demand of tasks. The following excerpt from student B’s mini-lesson illustrates this perspective.

Actually, I didn’t care too much about strategies others used, and the best way was to keep developing what I did in the past. I believe “listing words and idioms” is the first step to study English and has always been effective in studying English since I was 15 [freshman in junior high school in Korea]. (class discussion, Feb. 5, 2005)

Student A responded to a peer’s question about the ineffectiveness of ‘rereading’

strategy.

Obviously, reading passages twice needs longer time, and I know time is also important in the TOEFL test. However, once you understand how this helps your reading comprehension, you will try to read many times. I sometimes did not finish some of the problems due to the time constraint, but I think I can take care of that problem by practicing a lot this strategy. (class discussion, Feb. 20, 2005)

Both students A and B seemed to organize their approaches to all the tasks in the similar way and expressed the preference for using the particular strategies regardless of aspects of tasks by addressing their prior learning experiences. Student B expressed the reason why she stuck to the particular strategy by raising the importance of vocabulary and grammar in English learning. On the other hand, student A, despite a critical flaw in his strategy use (i.e., leaving some of the questions unanswered), supported ‘rereading’ strategy with the beliefs that a more intensive practice might handle this problem. Regardless of the appropriateness of their strategies, the pattern shared by the students in the less flexible group was quite consistent with their beliefs in that they recursively engaged in reading practices with a limited range of strategies even when other alternatives were available.


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2) Strategy Use by the Students Possessing More Flexible Beliefs about L2 Learning In the present study, students D and E were classified as holding more flexible beliefs

about L2 learning. The pattern shared by the more flexible group was not stable during the mini-lessons in that they used a wide range of strategies in various ways. Specifically, they, while engaging in the mini-lessons, often shifted their approach according to the demand of tasks. Some of the reading strategies commonly used by students D and E were ‘guessing’ and ‘reading the passage in the context’ in addition to ‘listing words and idioms.’ While student A, for example, made it a rule to list the words and idioms before reading the passage, student D who believed that learners didn’t need to memorize every word often attempted to use a ‘predicting the meaning of unknown words in the sentence’ in vocabulary questions.

Unlike the students in the less flexible group, students D and E were quite different in their ways of using strategies in that their beliefs reflected in reading strategies were often shaped by their unsuccessful learning experiences. In the interview, student D demonstrated that the unsuccessful approach she had used in Korea functioned as an incentive to learn alternative reading approach that might be appropriate to aspects of tasks (i.e., the R/C of the TOEFL), thereby enabling them to adopt a new reading strategy whenever available. In interview, student E said,

While studying the TOEFL reading, I experienced many times that remembering the word is not enough to solve the vocabulary problem. Most problems in this question type are caused by lack of comprehending the reading rather than by unknown words. So, I think depending heavily on original definition of word is not desirable for the TOEFL reading. (interview, March 15, 2005)

In the excerpt from the class discussion over main idea question type, student E, who believed that there was no formal way to learn English, supported the use of a seemingly strange reading strategy by illustrating her experience in Korea.

The repeated failure of comprehending the readings in Korea helped me realize that continuously using the inappropriate strategies [rereading entire passage for main idea] will not improve reading comprehension. For example, when reading a whole passage again, I could not catch the main point because of too much information carried. So, I sometimes [not always] ‘attack first and last paragraph only’ and it often provide enough information on the main idea. (class discussion, Feb. 9, 2005)

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Both students D and E seemed to show their ability to match their choice of strategy to the demands of tasks (the TOEFL reading) and were relatively flexible in using alternative strategies available during the mini-lessons. Learners’ flexible beliefs guided them to focus on aspects of the tasks where they thought it was important.

In summary, the Korean students in the two different groups tended to use reading strategies consistent with their beliefs on L2 learning although patterns of using these strategies differed across the groups. Specifically, the students in the more flexible group appeared to apply reading strategies in various ways according to the demands of the tasks. Contrarily, the students in the less flexible group were often influenced by their limited knowledge and prior learning habits and tended to apply a few strategies to their L2 reading in a simplistic way regardless of the demands of tasks.

2. Socialization through the Reading Strategy Development

When the Korean students felt that there existed better strategies and that they used

inappropriate strategies, they, as relative experts or novices, acquired the academic discourse by communicating their expertise and difficulties, strategically involving peers in their evaluation processes, and by internalizing alternative strategies over the course of the study. Table 3 below summarizes a wide range of reading strategies corresponding to each question type, and various types of strategies reported suggest the nature of reading strategies that may not be generalized across individual learners.

TABLE 3

Reading Strategies by Question Type Reading Strategies Descriptions

Main Idea Type Rereading Read a passage again to better recall more information on the text. Fast reading (skimming) Read quickly to find the main ideas of a text. Memory notes Carry a part of the information in their memories while reading.

Making reading notes Take specific notes (i.e., main idea, conclusion) on what they read.

Guessing Use available information and image to infer main idea. Looking at question first Help learners pay attention to the content they have to focus on.

Reading first/last paragraphs Provide sufficient information to capture the main ideas of a text.

Reference/Inference Type Using key words Find a specific location of necessary information. Memory notes Use what learners remember to get necessary information. Scanning Read fast to find a particular point from a text. Reading without break Engage in reading activity without mental breakdown. Visualizing the text Use image to draw whole picture of the passage. Eliminating factual statement Get rid of restatement of the passage from multiple choices. Rereading Make learners better recall information on the test.


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Vocabulary Type Listing words Rely on the definition of word appearing on a dictionary. Meaning from the context Place words in the meaningful language sequence. Guessing unknown word Predict the meaning of a word based on prior knowledge. Memorizing Memorize any unknown words as many as possible. Using elimination process Eliminate unreasonable items from multiple choices. Reading Comprehension Type Making annotation Make marks on the margin of the text while reading. Writing reading summary Summarize what they read after reading. Analyzing structures Analyze a passage structure to predict the story. Using transition words Predict the direction of the development of a story. Taking notes Write down main point, outline, or brief summary. Transferring Use L1 as a basis for understanding L2. Rereading Read a passage again to comprehend a reading passage. Reading questions first Serve as source for appropriate prediction of the meaning. Eliminating parenthesis Help to comprehend a passage by facilitating reading process.

1) Bi-directional Continuum of the Novice-Expert Interaction

Through the mini-lessons that were designed to expose alternative reading strategies

used by peers, the Korean ESL learners began to recognize that there existed various approaches to solving the same type of questions in the R/C of the TOEFL. As the class proceeded, all the students made reasonable comparisons of their own performance to that of peers to evaluate the appropriateness of the use of strategies. This expert-novice interaction was accomplished by communicating their ‘epistemic stance’ (Ohta, 1991) in various ways, assuming a variety of roles (i.e., teaching or learning) during the mini-lessons. Learners in social interactions constituted themselves as relative experts or novices by communicating their expertise and difficulties, sharing the relative strength and weakness of using strategies, and displaying their lack of knowledge about the particular strategies.

Discourse socialization through the use of reading strategies tended to be understood on a bi-directional continuum of novice-expert interaction, showing academic discourse could occur in either direction. While making a relative strategy evaluation in the class, each learner took various stances – a relative expert, a relative novice, or a relative expert and novice at the same time. A central idea of a relative expert and novice is that learners stand at varying points on the novice-expert continuum. As illustrated in the excerpt below, even an expert learner as a relative novice (student G in this study) often monitored his own learning path by interacting with others’ ideas. While novice learners, for example, acquired academic discourse by shifting expertise from peers, expert learners also had a chance to improve their approaches by monitoring reading strategies used by novice learners. Before the excerpt below from a mini-lesson given by student D, the class was in

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severe debate on the reading strategies related to the reference type question (i.e., finding the location of specific information necessary to solve the question) in the R/C of the TOEFL.

In the following excerpt, student G (audience, non-Korean student in my reading class) engaged in a strategy evaluation process by questioning the appropriateness of ‘look at the questions first’ strategy to student D (presenter).

G: ((looking at student D)) Uh: I know you are very good at solving this

[reference-type] question, but I think it may be because you have a good memory, not because it [looking at the question first] is effective in that question.

D: ((smiling)) I don’t think so. Once you know what reference question is asked by looking at the question, you will immediately find the location of necessary information when you first read the reading passage. Also, I believe you don’t have to read again to solve reference question.

G: ((looking at other students)) I mean ‘skimming’, not rereading. I still believe that ‘skimming’ strategy is best for reference type question if I read fast enough to solve all the other problems in a given time. The benefit of this strategy is to help you guys solve other problems by improving reading comprehension although I cannot read fast to utilize this strategy.

D: ((nodding head)) I know what you said. (class discussion, April 3, 2005)

Student G expressed his stance as a relative novice in the reference-type question by admitting his lack of knowledge about an alternative strategy used by student D and his difficulty in solving this type of question. On the other hand, student D took the role of a relative expert by critiquing peer’s misunderstanding of ‘looking at the questions first’ strategy, providing the rationale for using this strategy, and showing her confidence for using it. Furthermore, student G took the roles of both a relative novice and a relative expert during a mini-lesson, suggesting that learning could occur along a bi-directional continuum from expert to novice. Although student G felt he was not able to better utilize ‘skimming’ strategy due to time constraints, he, as a relative expert in this time, suggested that this strategy could be appropriate for any learner who had the ability to read fast. And student G’s suggestion seemed to be seriously considered by student D (expert learner in the above except).


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2) Strategic Involvement of Peers in the Evaluation Process Before internalizing alternative reading strategies, all the Korean IELP students often

engaged in the evaluation process by strategically involving peers and a teacher in their problem areas during the mini-lessons. This process revealed that the students did not adopt the alternative strategies simply because peers used those strategies. Through this evaluation process, individual learners began to learn why, where, and when to use alternative strategies. In evaluating the potential contribution of a particular strategy to their L2 learning, Korean IELP students not only reflected their own judgment on the appropriateness of the reading strategy, but also others’ use of the strategy often conveyed by way of peer supports (sharing personal experiences and exchanging relative expertise and difficulties). The learners tended to strategically involve peers in their evaluation process to observe their way of using the particular strategy, thereby checking the validity of using a new strategy.

This illustrates why traditional strategy instructions that often fail to reflect the role of peers (i.e., engaging in strategic interaction among learners) are more likely to be misleading in many L2 learning classrooms. Through the process of evaluating an appropriate strategy, the students were exposed to a wide range of opportunities to learn various aspects of alternative approaches over the course of the study. In that process, strategic interaction between peers and a teacher played an important role in developing appropriate reading strategies specific to them.

The following excerpt from a part of the mini-lesson of student C (i.e., debate over improving reading comprehension) illustrates how he gradually developed a particular reading strategy (i.e., understanding the meaning of a word in a sentence) as a tool in socialization process by strategically involving peers and a teacher in his evaluation process.

(1) C: ((looking at audience)) Before I read the passage, I try to memorize all

the vocabulary and words, and I think it helps improve reading comprehension. But, I didn’t do very well in the last TOEFL test.

(2) E: Because you can’t do this [memorizing vocabulary and idioms] in the real TOEFL test ((looks at student D)). I – uhm- recommend you find the meaning in the sentence. You don’t’ need to know every word. Thing about any word that makes sense.

(3) C: Is it working? I think guessing is just guessing, I think. (4) A: ((responding to student C)) It’s not a guessing. Actually you are

completing a sentence. (5) D: ((joining the discussion)) I also have used this [approach]. It gives some

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idea about the meaning reading passage even before reading. For example, in this reading, the word should be “methods” or “ways” of storing coffee fresh. In my experience, it makes big difference.

(6) B: ((looking at student C)) Also, it [meaning from the context] will help your reading comprehension as well.

… (7) C: It sound good, but –uhm- I never here of it. what do you think, ((looks

at instructor)) teacher? (8) T: I think it is a good approach although geeing the meaning from the

sentence requires a lot of practices. One of the problems my students have is that students are often bothered by unknown words, which makes reading comprehension less clear especially at the beginning of the reading. In that sense, if you keep practicing, it will help your understanding.

(9) C: It sounds reasonable. (class discussion, May 17, 2005)

In Turn 1, student C seemed to express his lack of confidence in taking the real TOEFL because his approach (i.e., reviewing all the unknown words and idioms before reading the passage) could not be applied to real test. He challenged the seemingly strange strategy (meaning from the context) suggested by student E (Turn 2). Student D, joining the discussion (Turn 5), demonstrated her expertise in this strategy by showing how to apply it to a real problem. While student B (Turn 6), a relative expert in utilizing this strategy, supported student D’s argument by pointing out additional benefit of using the alternative strategy, the teacher’s response to student C’s question (Turn 8) seemed to help him evaluate the validity of using the alternative strategy.

All the Korean students gradually developed reading strategies applicable to their L2 learning, like other learning activities, through the evaluation process. However, some difference existed between the students (students A, B, and C) in the less flexible group and the students (students D and E) in the more flexible group in adopting the alternative strategies: the time period required for developing their own reading strategies. While students D and E, on average, tended to apply the alternative strategies in a relatively short period of time in the class, students A, B, and C were able to use the alternative strategies nearly at the end of the semester. It suggests that knowing a strategy is different from using it.

The students in the less flexible group were relatively influenced by what they had learned in the past. The Korean students in the less flexible group had been relatively accustomed to teacher-directed learning environments, displaying a lack of self-directness in L2 learning. One of the widely held beliefs about L2 learning was that most of the L2


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learning stemmed from teachers. As my reading classroom allowed participants to be involved in discussions and to assume a variety of roles as a learner or as a teacher, they began to realize the importance of learning from peers. However, the barrier to learning alternative strategies was that students A and B had long been using the particular approach even without knowledge about its appropriateness and regardless of demand of the tasks. For example, student A had been using ‘transfer’ strategy (i.e., systematically applying the definition of words and grammatical usages learned from the dictionary to the reading regardless of the context of reading) for many years simply because he used it at the early stage of English learning. This older habit made him take a relatively longer time in realizing the limitation of ‘transfer’ strategy in the TOEFL reading that required more inferential ability, thereby experiencing some period of persistent, inappropriate strategy use.

The following interview transcripts illustrate learners’ perspectives on their old strategy use. Student A responded to the question about ‘any alternative strategy you learned from others in inference question type’ (e.g., what can be inferred from the passage about….).

Yes, I sometimes try to “read without break.” I learned it from student E. But, I still believe that I can develop what I did [transferring using L1] by practicing more. I often try to read without break, but I always stop to interpret some sentences. (interview, May 20, 2005)

Student B responded,

Yes, I now try to summarize the reading. But, I often repeat reading passages because I did it for many years. I know it’s not good for TOEFL reading, but it [rereading] makes me comfortable. (interview, March 20, 2005)

Student B demonstrates, despite her recognition of an inappropriate use of strategy, why she slowly adopted alternative strategy by expressing her preference for what she learned in the past. Similarly, student A expressed his desire to improve the perceived inappropriate strategy (transfer strategy) by practicing more, while practicing a new strategy.

3) Internalizing Process of Reading Strategies

The evidence from the interview data showed that students’ efforts to internalize the

alternative strategies outside of class were an important step to develop reading strategies although the students in both beliefs groups differed in terms of efforts they exerted. This aspect of reading strategies has not been addressed in the strategy training studies,

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suggesting that students may not achieve what they intend to improve without the efforts to internalize those strategies outside of class. The mini-lessons provided an opportunity to identify good strategies specific to individual learners. When alternative strategies were believed to be helpful during the mini-lessons, the students who practiced perceived good strategies more frequently outside of class were able to shorten the process of internalizing reading strategies. The Korean students in the less flexible group often engaged in inconsistent out-of-class practices, taking relatively longer time to internalize reading strategies available to them.

Like other learning activities, reading strategies were considered as something that they had to practice outside of class. The Korean students who said, in interviews, they were consistently practicing reading strategies outside of the class reported the gradual progress of their reading comprehension in preparing for the TOEFL reading. On the contrary, students A and C who reported that they engaged in alternative strategies inconsistently and infrequently outside of class did not tell immediate benefits of using these strategies. The reason why students A and C were able to develop the alternative strategies nearly at the end of the semester seemed attributed to their infrequent practices of these strategies outside of class.

In the interview transcripts, students A and E illustrated how their effort levels influenced the process of internalizing reading strategies.

Yes, sometimes I [student A] exercise reading fast. But, I often read and read a passage. I didn’t practice a lot this [read fast] at home because I forget. But, I do it again when I don’t have enough time to solve problems. (interview, April 18, 2005)

Contrarily, student E responded to a question about ‘use of alternative tricks outside of class.’

Whenever I read, I summarize it. Now I can see my progress. When I summarize, I think I know what a writer is trying to say. I am pretty comfortable. Although it takes lots of time when I first start summarizing, I can do this very fast. For me, one of the best ways is to keep practicing. (interview, March 15, 2005)

Student A did not practice the alternative strategy consistently since he considered it as an effective strategy applicable only when he felt time constraints (leaving some questions unanswered during the test). Due to less intensive practice, he took substantial time in internalizing ‘fast reading’ strategy. On the other hand, student E who engaged in ongoing


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practices was able to develop an alternative strategy applicable to her learning situation. In summary, two things that were more likely to influence the development of reading

strategies tended to be ‘the strategy evaluation process’ illuminating a social dimension of interaction and ‘the internalization process’ reflecting on an individual dimension of interaction. From a discourse socialization perspective, a group of Korean ESL students gradually developed appropriate reading strategies as a tool in the socialization process by communicating their expertise and difficulties, by strategically involving peers and a teacher in their L2 learning situation, and by internalizing alternative reading strategies. The mini-lesson as a social place to negotiate cultural differences in beliefs provided a range of opportunities to develop reading strategies through classroom practices.

IV. DISCUSSION

1. Discussion of Results This 6-month ethnographic study attempted to yield a better understanding of the

academic socialization of Korean IELP students in the ESL reading class by focusing on their use of reading strategies. Mainly drawn on a language socialization perspective, this study explored how the students possessing different beliefs on L2 learning developed reading strategies applicable to their L2 learning through one type of classroom activity, a mini-lesson led by the students.

The main results of this study are as follows. First, the students’ beliefs about L2 learning influenced the way of using reading strategies in various ways. The learners who possessed less flexible beliefs tended to use reading strategies in the same and simplistic way regardless of aspects of the tasks. On the contrary, the learners who possessed more flexible beliefs seemed to apply reading strategies appropriate to the demands of the tasks. Although the patterns of using reading strategies differed across the groups, they, on average, described reading strategies consistent with their beliefs. In the context of SLA learning, this result addressed the importance of the role of the personal beliefs on the use of reading strategies, suggesting that traditional strategy instruction might be misleading without properly taking learners’ beliefs into consideration (Donato & McCormick, 1994; Sakuui & Gaies, 1999; Wenden 2001). It was also found that the Korean students tended to be more flexible over time in adopting alternative strategies as they knew why, where, and when to use the particular reading strategies during the mini-lessons.

Second, the Korean students, as relative experts and relative novices, developed reading strategies specific to them by communicating their expertise and difficulties, by strategically involving peers in their evaluation process, and by internalizing reading

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strategies outside of class. This result was consistent with recent work of Klinger and Vaughn (2000) and Morita (2000) in many aspects. Unlike previous language socialization studies that viewed the expert-novice interaction as one directional (i.e., child-parents, student-teacher), this study revealed that discourse socialization through the use of reading strategies should be understood on a bi-directional continuum of expert-novice interaction. The less able learners learned from the competent learners while expert learners had an opportunity to develop their reading strategies by reviewing the approaches taken by the novice learners during the mini-lessons. It suggests that academic discourse could occur in either direction.

Although the classroom interaction helped the students learn the appropriate strategies that might be applicable to their own learning situations, they might not achieve what they intended without efforts to internalize those strategies outside of class. Like other learning activities, reading strategies were considered as something that the students had to develop over time to profit from using them as a tool acquiring academic discourses. Learner differences in developing reading strategies were found in the students’ efforts to internalize these strategies outside of class. Specifically, the students possessing less flexible beliefs often engaged in strategy practices inconsistently outside of class. However, as mini-lessons proceeded over time, they gradually recognized the strategy practices as an essential part of the reading strategy development.

Two things that were more likely to influence the development of reading strategies tended to be ‘the strategy evaluation process’ comprising a social dimension of interaction and ‘the internalization process’ illuminating an individual dimension of interaction. In general, the results of the study suggest that discourse socialization of Korean L2 learners through the use of reading strategies should be dynamic since it involves a sequence of strategic interactions where L2 learners negotiate different approaches to learning to develop reading strategies appropriate to their learning conditions.

2. Implication

The current study strongly supports the pedagogical notion that in L2 classrooms it is

important to focus on L2 learners themselves, who have various literacy experiences from different learning traditions and provide the unique data unattainable from any objective measurements (Hirvela, 2001; Kamhi-Stein, 2003). This sheds light on important aspects of L2 teaching practices. Rather than focus on instructional practices that provide an encapsulated strategy instruction in artificial ways, ESL teachers should provide a rich environment where students share various approaches to learning through a natural exploration of literacy. My study suggests some pedagogical practices that could be applied to the ESL reading classrooms.


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First, for teachers who are helping L2 students become good readers in an academic environment, it appears that learning through the reading strategies involves more than teaching students a few reading strategies that might be appropriate to their L2 learning. Rather than focus just on strategies, teachers and students must be aware of their beliefs about L2 learning and their willingness to change those beliefs, if necessary. In this respect, a teacher is encouraged to create the situation where students can share various aspects of reading strategies and can strategically engage in the process of evaluating alternative strategies available to them (Jacob et al., 1996; O’Connor & Jenkins, 1996)

Since discourse socialization through the use of reading strategies requires active involvement of learners in the class activities, a large ESL class may be barriers to participation, limiting an interactional opportunity to learn from others. In that sense, the ESL class must be properly structured to create learning climate that encourages learners’ participation. Arranging a large ESL class to small interest groups can be one of the solutions that create a participatory and cooperative climate. Pair work or reading discussion class is another good example teachers can use as a social place to negotiate difficulties and expertise. The above discussion illustrates how an instructional model can lead to the potential for further growth toward reading strategy development.

Second, ESL teachers should remember that the process of developing reading strategies specific to learners evolved differently according to their flexibility of beliefs systems. Specifically, the students possessing less flexible beliefs on L2 learning often returned to the old habits and repeated the mistakes they made in the prior learning, producing inconsistent patterns of the strategy use outside of class. It suggests that the reading strategy development of those students should be considered in a longer time framework. Without understanding of learner differences in reading strategy development, ESL teachers may not gain promising results from any approach they apply to their students. To facilitate the internalization process, ESL teachers can provide the differentiated instructions or tasks students could use on their own outside of class. For example, the assignments related to the particular reading strategy (i.e., reading summaries, annotated reading) would shorten the internalization process by encouraging them to engage in ongoing practices outside of class.

Finally, researchers could address a limitation of this study in that the findings of the study may be applied only to Korean L2 students. I didn’t make any attempt to generalize the results across other ethnicity groups or academic settings. However, future research involving other ESL student groups (either homogenous group or heterogeneous group) is highly recommended. In particular, more research involving a broad range of L2 reading classes (i.e., college L2 reading classes) is certainly needed in order to examine whether the findings converge or diverge across different L2 learning contexts.

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REFERENCES

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Donato, R., & McCormick, D. (1994). A sociocultural perspective on language learning strategies: The role of mediation. Mordern Language Journal, 78(4), 453-464.

Duff, P. A. (1995). An ethnography of communication in immersion classrooms in Hungary. TESOL Quarterly, 29, 505-537.

Duff, P. A. (2000). Language socialization in mainstream content-based discussions. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, Vancouver, BC, March, 2000.

Ellis, R. (1994). The study of second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University. Gee, J. P. (1992). The social mind: Language, ideology, and social practice. New York:

Bergin & Garvey. Hirvela, A. (2001). Incorporating reading into EAP writing courses. In J. Flowerdew (Ed.),

Research perspectives on English for academic purposes (pp. 330-346). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Kamhi-Stein, L. D. (2003). Reading in two languages: How attitudes toward home language and beliefs about reading affect the behaviors of “underprepared” L2 college readers. TESOL Quarterly, 37(1), 35-71.

Klingner, J. K., & Vaughn. S. (2000). The helping behaviors of fifth graders while using collaborative strategic reading during ESL content classes. TESOL Quarterly, 34(1), 69-98.

Klinger, J. K., & Schuman, J. S. (1998). Collaborative strategies reading during social studies in heterogeneous fourth-grade classrooms. The Elementary School Journal, 99(1), 3-20.

Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in practice: Mind, mathematics, and culture in everyday life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Liang, X., Mohan, B. A., & Early, M. (1998). Issues of cooperative learning in ESL classes: A lterature review. TESL Canada Journal, 15(2), 13-23.

Morita, N. (2000). Discourse socialization through oral classroom activities in a TESL graduate program. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 279-308.

Oches, E. (1988). Culture and language development: Language acquisition and language socialization in a Samoan village. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Oches, E. (2002). Becoming a speaker of culture. In C. Kramsch (Ed.), Language acquisition and language socialization (pp. 99-120). New York: Continuum.

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APPENDIX A Student Interview Guide

During the mini-lesson, you are asked to remember any particular techniques the presenter use to solve the questions, to identify organization of that technique (i.e., students or tutor), and to provide information on whether you attempt to do in your presentation or outside of the class.

Student’s Mini-Lesson Name: _______________________ A. Preparation You have to teach the assigned reading passage of the TOEFL in class and answer the question the peer raises.

1. What help you to prepare your lesson? 2. Do you use any techniques that you learned from peers or tutor in lesson and

continuously use it outside of the class? 3. Do you have any special tricks that help you answer questions during your presentation?

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B. Inference You face some sentences or words in reading passage that you do not know, and you have to figure out what they mean.

1. How do you do this? 2. Do you have any special ways to help you? If any, did you try it in your studying outside

of the class? 3. While you understand the first part of the reading passage (i.e., one or two paragraphs),

you fail to comprehend the rest of the passage. 4. Do you have any special tricks that help you predict or guess the ending? 5. Do you try something that others use in their presentation? 6. Do you do this in your studying in class or outside of the class?

C. Recall/Analysis You are supposed to finish the TOEFL reading within four or five minutes, but it is important to get main idea to answer the questions. While solving the problems,

1. What do you do that helps you understand the main idea and details? 2. Do you try to use the ways that you observed in the class? 3. Have you ever attempted to use it in your study?

D. Vocabulary Learning You will frequently face the new words (or phrases) when studying reading comprehension of the TOEFL test. In order to learn the meaning the new words in English,

1. Do you have any special tricks to help you learn and remember new words? 2. Do you try ways others use if you recall what they use in their presentation?

APPENDIX B Questionnaire for Beliefs about English Learning

Below are beliefs that some people have about learning foreign languages. Read each statement and then decide if you: (1) strongly agree or almost always true of me, (2) agree or almost true of me, (3) neither agree nor disagree, (4) disagree or almost never true of me, (5) strongly disagree or almost always never true of me. We are simply interested in your opinions. Name: ____________________ Sex: _________ Years in the US: __________ Respond to questions below by using the following rating scale. 1 = strongly agree / 2 = agree / 3 = neutral / 4 = disagree / 5 = strongly disagree


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A. English Language Learning 1 There exists a formal way to learn English. 1 2 3 4 5 2 If I am permitted to make errors, it will be difficult to learn correctly 1 2 3 4 5 later on. 3 Most of the English learning stems from teacher. 1 2 3 4 5 4 Reading and writing in English are separate skills to develop. 1 2 3 4 5 5 Knowing every word in reading passage is important. 1 2 3 4 5 6 I need to master English reading first to learn English writing. 1 2 3 4 5 7 I always practice English using only English textbook. 1 2 3 4 5 8 Most of the learning in English is done in school. 1 2 3 4 5 9 Reading magazine or newspaper is different from reading textbook. 1 2 3 4 5 10 I always follow certain steps when I study English. 1 2 3 4 5

B. Learning Strategy

11 The most important part of learning English is always learning vocabulary. 1 2 3 4 5

12 It is always important part to repeat and practice a lot. 1 2 3 4 5 13 It is always important to master reading first before learning writing. 1 2 3 4 5 14 You should not guess if you don’t know a word in English. 1 2 3 4 5

15 Learning words and idioms should be first done before reading passages. 1 2 3 4 5

16 There is no other way to learn English grammar except memorizing. 1 2 3 4 5 17 I should learn English in the same way I practiced previously. 1 2 3 4 5

18 When having problems, I always ask questions to teachers than students. 1 2 3 4 5

19 Working with other students is different from learning from teachers. 1 2 3 4 5 20 You should not help other students until you master English. 1 2 3 4 5 Applicable levels: ESL learners at the College level Key words: L2 Discourse Socialization, Reading Strategies, Beliefs about L2 Learning Sun-Young Kim School of English Kyung Hee University 1 Hoegi-dong, Dongdaemoon-gu Seoul 130-701, Korea Email: [email protected] Received in November, 2006 Reviewed in January, 2007 Revised version received in February, 2007

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