Ways to Good Reading Comprehension : A qualitative study of teachers’ views of the teaching of reading comprehension and reading strategies

Abstract: The purpose of this study has been to explore reading comprehension with a focus on how teachers talk about their teaching of reading comprehension. To gain knowledge about how teachers work to increase and stimulate pupils’ reading comprehension, we decided to use qualitative interviews to further our knowledge and understanding of reading comprehension. Therefore, we interviewed five teachers who teach English in years 7–9, asking them to define reading comprehension and reading strategies, describe a lesson opportunity when they worked with texts and tasks, and encouraging them to talk about what reading strategies they usually promote in their teaching to enhance pupils’ understanding of texts.  The results show that teachers defined reading comprehension in similar ways. From the interviews it appeared that all teachers believe that pupils can understand texts if they link them to their own experiences. Therefore, it is important that texts are interesting to read. The results differed among the teachers regarding the teaching of reading strategies. Even though several of the interviewed teachers believe that it is important that pupils use different strategies to develop their reading comprehension, four of them do not spend time on teaching them. Instead, they advise pupils to use some strategies that they think are useful. In addition, the results reveal that pupils also need to distinguish between strategies and adapt them to the purpose for reading texts. The findings also show that teachers work with different types of texts and they design various tasks for texts according to pupils’ levels and needs.