Reading strategies used while reading academic texts in the Croatian and English language

Mikulec, Alenka. (2016). Reading strategies used while reading academic texts in the Croatian and English language. PhD Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of English Language and Literature.
(Poslijediplomski doktorski studij glotodidaktike) [mentor Šamo, Renata].

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Abstract

Although considered the easiest of the language skills, reading in both the mother tongue (L1) and a second language (L2) is actually a very complex language skill, which has been recognized as one of the important factors that affect students' success during their higher education, but also later in life. Despite the numerous findings pertaining to the processes involved in the development of reading (starting with the development of prereading skills to the stage of fully developed reading skills and reading literacy as the ultimate goal), and the numerous models and theories of reading (bottom-up and top-down model, and interactive approaches), whose aim has been to explain the processes related to reading and their interaction, there is still no definite description of how a reader processes information while reading and which factors may have a positive or negative impact on the successful processing. These issues are particularly evident in bi- and multilingual readers when reading in both their second and first language, because, apart from the need for additional knowledge and skills related to second language acquisition, these readers may also have to deal with the transfer of knowledge, skills and abilities from one language to the other. Whether the impact of the transfer has been positive or negative can usually be determined on the basis of the external indicators, unlike the direction of transfer (from L1 to L2 or vice versa), which is not always unambiguous. An attempt will be made to explain some of the issues related to reading in L1 and L2 with the help of the linguistic interdependence hypothesis (Cummins, 1986), the threshold hypothesis (Cummins, 1976) and the short circuit hypothesis (Clarke, 1980).

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