A proposal for a reading strategies training programme for secondary students.

Abstract

Even though the Spanish Official Curriculum stresses the use of autonomous learning strategies, there are paradoxically scarce studies regarding strategies instruction in Foreign Language Learning in Spain. The present paper is the summary of a proposal of a reading strategies training programme included in a wider project. The authors' experience, the Curriculum and the specialised literature were used in its conception and design. This resulted in a twelve-week explicit strategy training programme introductory in nature and addressed to sixteen-year-old Spanish native students, their level of English being low-intermediate. The aim of the training programme was to develop the skill of reading for different purposes (confirming expectations, getting general and specific information) by means of the strategies of predicting, skimming and scanning respectively. These would be exploited in eighteen hours, which comprised a "Preparation" and an "lntroduction" session followed by a "Presentation", "Practice" and "Evaluation" stage for each one of the strategies. A "General Practice and Evaluation" section plus an "Expansion" class were included at the end. We also address the rationale behind the different decisions taken.