engleski

Young EFL Learners and their reading awareness: A case study with twins

This study refers to the first stage of a larger- scale investigation into the strategic reading behaviour of young Croatian EFL learners in Grade 5. Its particular aim was to investigate the development of reading ability in case of a pair of twins, who had started learning English in Grade 1 (age 6/7). It was especially focused on the participants’ comprehension awareness, and included the following instruments: Metacomprehension Strategy Index, Croatian reading comprehension task and after-reading self-report questionnaire, as well as English reading comprehension task and after-reading self-report questionnaire. The participants’ general school achievement and achievement in EFL proficiency, based on year-end grades (Grade 1 to 4), were also taken into account. The so-called mixed-method approach (quantitative and qualitative analysis) was used for interpreting the data collected like this from several sources. The obtained results did not indicate only the crucial similarities between the twins, but they also revealed some interesting differences between them. Following the study’s focus, both types of characteristics primarily referred to their awareness of strategic processes before, during and after reading. In addition, they showed their ideas of L1 and L2 (EFL) reading as two distinctive activities, along with their self-evaluation of reading in Croatian and in English. The current case study should be seen as a contribution to investigation into two broad and relevant fields such as reading and early SLA, from a perspective that still seems to be under-represented in their research scopes.

YLs, EFL, L2 reading, comprehension and metacomprehension

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