As stated above the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) by Mokhtari & Sheorey (2002) was developed to measure ESL students’ awareness of reading strategies. In order to understand deeply about SORS, the following presents the original SORS, the reasons for developing SORS and its categories of strategies.
2.2.3.1. The Original SORS
With the aim at assessing non-native English students’ awareness of reading strategy use, SORS was designed with 30 items measuring three broad categories of reading strategies: global strategies (GLOB), problem-solving strategies (PROB) and support strategies (SUP). Among these categories, GLOB contains 13 items that help students monitor and manage their reading intentionally such as “Deciding what to read or ignore”, “noting text characteristics” or “guessing what the material is about”. PROB are those that assist students to solve problems when the text becomes difficult to read, consisting of 8 items such as “re-reading for better understanding” and “going back when losing concentration”. The final category is SUP that provides students with support mechanisms to sustain the responses to reading. It involves the use of taking notes, underlining or circling information.
A five-point Likert scale was used following each item to indicate the frequency of using strategy ranging from 1 “I never or almost never do this” to 5 “I always or almost always do this”.
In addition, to ensure the reliability of the three categories of SORS, the internal consistency reliability coefficients as determined by Cronbach’ alpha were used. After
analizing the reliability coefficients for three categories were as follow: GLOB (a = .92); PROB (a. = .79) and SUP (a = .87). The reliability for the overall category was a = .93. These reliability coefficients of SORS indicates a reasonablely dependable measure of students’ awareness of reading strategies.
So far, many researchers have used SORS as the main instruments in their studies and they have also made some comments on SORS as follow:
Lee & Liao (2007) when examining 163 Taiwan college students’ awareness of reading strategy use, decided to use SORS as the main instrument to collect data. The reason for using SORS was explained that SORS contained broader and comprehensive categories of strategies which were grouped reasonably and therefore, it helped better examine and increase students’ awareness of strategy use. That’s why Lee and Liao concluded that SORS was an effective tool for investigating ESL students’ awareness of reading strategy use.
Poole (2009) in an effort to assess the awareness of reading strategy use among female and male students in a university also adapted SORS to collect data. Poole indicated that compared to other instruments, for example, think-aloud process was one way students and teachers become aware of strategy use, however, SORS enabled both teachers and bilingual students who had differing strategy use than-monolingual students to become more reflective. Thus, SORS is more appropriate for assessing ESL students’ awareness of reading strategies (Poole, 2009).
Zhang & Wu (2009) evaluated SORS as not only an effective tool for collecting data but also a helpful instrument which assisted students to be more aware of reading strategies they employed. They admitted that SORS was really a strong instrument support the positive link between students’ awareness of reading strategies and their reading comprehension. Zhang and Wu also suggested that SORS was a better instruction that teachers should use to instruct students reading strategies (Zhang & Wu, 2009).
With respect to the comments and evaluations of the advantages of SORS by authors, the researcher was again persuaded to adapt the original SORS as the main instrument of the present study for collecting data.
2.2.3.2. Why SORS is developed?
In 2002, Mokhtari and Sheorey in an effort to find a tool for assessing ESL students’
awareness of reading strategies developed SORS which was initially based on the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory by Mokhtari & Reichard (2002). According to Alderson (2005) SORS was considered as a necessary, dependable and reliable measure of ESL students’ metacognition and reading strategies. The impetus for Mokhtari and Sheorey to develop SORS was as follow:
Firstly, it was the need to have a tool that can be able to assist teachers in helping students increase their awareness of reading strategies Mokhtari and Sheorey were motivated to develop SORS. The two researchers hope that SORS will help students be more aware of strategies they used and become more thoughtful, constructively responsive and strategic readers while reading academic materials.
Second, it was generated from the fact that many researchers have demonstrated that there was a relationship between students’ awareness of reading strategies and their ability and the importance of the awareness of reading strategy use ‘to reading comprehension (see more details in 2.3.2), SORS was developed to examine that relationship. In deed, SORS proves to be an effective instrument in this field (Poole,
2005).
Third, until now we couldn’t find any published instruments that are specifically designed to assess ESL students’ awareness of reading strategy use while reading for academic purposes, thus, SORS was developed to meet that demand.
Finally, SORS contains a more comprehensive list of strategies than other instruments.
Even though many researchers agreed that a number of reading strategies can be transferable from one language to another (e.g., Carrell, 1991), the existing instruments do not take into account some of the strategies that are unique to students such as
“translating” or “using both languages” when reading to maximize understanding (Zhang, 2001). For example, the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning by Oxford (1989) and Carrell’s (1989) questionnaire which were known as the better tool for investigating students’ conceptualization of reading strategies did not contain that types of strategies. However, SORS compensates for the lack of such instruments.
Consequently, SORS seems to be more appropriate for ESL students and can measure
comprehensively students’ awareness of strategies than other existing instruments (Alderson, 2005).
The reasons why SORS is developed further indicate that it is a potential tool for researchers to explore ESL students’ awareness of reading strategy use. It also a better tool to assist teachers in helping students be aware of strategy use and become strategic readers. Especially, SORS contains in it comprehensive categories of strategies that are necessary for assessing comprehensively students’ awareness of reading strategies. The comprehensiveness of SORS’s strategies are discussed in details in the following part.
2.2.3.3. SORS Categories of Strategies
The SORS categories of strategies were developed on the basis of the MASRI categories of strategies by Mokhtari & Reichard (2002). MARSI categories of strategies contain three categories of reading strategies (see Appendix 1) namely: global strategies (13 items), problem strategies (8 items) and support strategies (9 items). These categories were built upon the Theory of Constructive Responsive Reading by Pressley
& Afflerbach (1995) which was considered as a firm theoretical underpinning for researchers to develop tools for assessing students’ awareness of reading strategies.
Mokhtari & Sheorey (2002) then adapted the classification of strategies in MARSI when the two researchers attempted to develop SORS. However, they made some changes to the items of strategies by adding two key strategies that have been usually employed by ESL students such as “translating from one language to another” and
“thinking in the native and target language while reading” and removing two items namely “summarizing information read” and “discussing what one reads with others”.
They also refined the wording of some items to make them more comprehensible to ESL students. All these changes have contributed to make the classification of categories of strategies by Mokhtari & Reichard (2002) more comprehensive and consistent with ESL students (Lee & Liao, 2007; Lawrence, 2007). The following concerned about the strategies under three categories of SORS.
Global Reading Strategies contains 13 items (see Appendix 1) and represents a set of strategies that relating to a whole analysis of text such as deciding what to read and what to ignore; thinking about what I know to help me understand what [ read” and having a purpose in mind when reading. These strategies can be considered as
intentional and careful planed reading strategies by which the students use with the aim at monitoring and managing their reading such as having a purpose in mind; previewing the text as to its length and organization, or using typographical aids and tables and figures (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002, p.252; Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2002, p.6).
Problem Solving Strategies consists of 8 items (Appendix 1) that were thought of strategies for solving problems when reading task becomes difficult. Strategies relating to this purpose include rereading to increase the understanding, adjusting reading speed when the materials’ becomes difficult or easy. These strategies provide students with action plans that allow them to navigate the text skillfully. Such strategies are localized, focused problem-solving or repair strategies used when problems develop in understanding information. Examples of these strategies include checking one’s understanding on encountering conflicting information or guessing the meaning of unknown words (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002, p.252; Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2002, p.6).
Support Strategies includes 9 items (see Appendix 2) involving the use of taking notes, and other practical strategies that might be described as functional or support strategies such as underlining or circling information in the text to better remember and summarizing the important information in the text. These strategies provide students with support mechanism aiming at sustaining responses to reading (¢.g., using reference materials such as dictionaries and other support systems) (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002, p.252-253; Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2002, p.6).
Mokhtari & Sheorey (2002) indicated that the categories of strategies in their SORS were to some extent equivalent to the categories classified by O’Malley & Chamot (1990). Accordingly, global strategics are consistent with the category of metacognitive strategies, problem strategies were in accordant with the category of cognitive strategies and support strategies were tantamount to the category of social/affective strategies.
Therefore, the names of categories can be’ interchangeable. However, according to
Lawrence (2007) the categories of strategies by Mokhtari & Sheorey (2002) were classified more detailed and more comprehensive than those by O’Malley & Chamot (1990). Especially, the wording of each statement in each category is more understandable and clearer to ESL students. SORS is thus reaffirmed to be consistent to the present study which intends to investigate ESL students’ awareness of reading
strategy use.
In addition, Lee & Liao (2007) addressed that the given categories of strategies enable students to develop a better awareness of their reading strategies while reading academic materials, And, the more students can be aware of strategies and use them flexibly the more they can be able to monitor their reading comprehension (O’Malley &
Chamot, 1990; O’Neil, 1992; Pressley, 2000 and Veenman, Kok, & Blửte, 2005).
Hence, the following section concerns about the discussion of the awareness’ of
strategies and its role in reading.