Exploring Reading Strategies Used by High Achiever

Abstract

Reading activity is important to find information by comprehending the message originated from a written source. Reading is an active mental process that mainly intended to comprehend the message in the text. To comprehend the text effectively, it is necessary for the reader to apply strategies that suit their reading needs. Therefore, the researcher aims to study reading strategies implemented by high achiever students. This research is conducted using descriptive qualitative design to answer the research questions. The participants in this study consist of 3 high achiever students from 8th semester at the university of Islam Malang. This study used semi-structured interviews as the instrument. The data for this research were collected with the use of WhatsApp voice notes. The data are analyzed using qualitative analysis that consists of data reduction, grouping, coding, and interpretation to get the data as a whole. The result indicates that there are 15 kinds of strategies implemented by high achiever students such as using prior knowledge, skimming, analyzing, summarizing, scanning, predicting, observing, planning, reflecting, reviewing, motivating, asking questions, discussion, asking opinion, cooperating with others, and decoding unknown vocabularies. High achiever students also implements reading strategies from pre-reading to post-reading strategies. In terms of the frequency of reading strategies, the study found that the students tend to use more cognitive strategies followed by metacognitive and social strategies, with the least used strategies were affective and compensatory strategies. The study suggest the implementation of various suitable reading strategies that fits reading needs as well as considering pre-reading and post-reading techniques. Moreover, learning session where students share about reading strategies is important to understand how high achiever students read. The study also suggest studying both high and low achiever to understand their differences in the use of reading strategies.

Keywords: Reading, Strategies, High-achiever.