HOW DO ESL STUDENTS STRATEGISE WHEN READING ACADEMIC TEXTS?

Understanding academic texts in English may be challenging for second language learners.  It requires a certain amount of effort and appropriate use of reading strategies in order to understand the texts.  In order to understand the academic texts, students have to be conscious of the reading strategies that can be used to enhance their level of reading comprehension.  Therefore, it is imperative to investigate reading strategies used by students in dealing with academic texts.  This study explores Universiti Teknologi MARA students’ awareness level of the use of reading strategies when reading academic texts.  This study utilises the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) by Mokhtari and Sheorey (2002). A total of 157 students from the Faculty of Administrative Science and Policy Studies participated in this study.  Findings showed that problem solving strategies are more prevalent among the students compared to support reading strategies and global reading strategies.  The findings reveal that the students need to be more exposed to support reading strategies and global reading strategies to further enhance their level of comprehension when reading academic texts.