ABSTRACT |
The research we are reporting on here was carried out within a project
financed by the Universitat de València on reading online in
English for freshmen students. Our main aim is to find out whether an
online foundation course in reading comprehension in English would be
welcomed by the students. A second objective is to gather insights into
how students read online texts, especially with regard to the strategies
they use to negotiate texts in English as only in this way can one
design effective teaching materials. Finally, our research looks into
whether it is necessary to provide students with guidance on how to read
electronic texts in English. The research we discuss here covers
objective two and three. In order to see what strategies non-native
students use to tackle reading material in English we filmed six
students while they carried out three exercises online, that is, a
reading comprehension exercise, a cloze exercise and a synonym exercise.
Due to space limitations we will only look at the reading exercise
here. Our results point to the fact that students do need a
certain amount of instruction to take advantage of the resources
available and guidance in metacognitive monitoring and control.
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