MAKING THE BEST USE OF A TEXTBOOK IN INDONESIAN TERTIARY EFL READING CLASSROOMS
Nowadays, EFL reading textbooks have adjusted their level of linguistic difficulties to their prospective users and provide texts about a variety of topics, detailed explanation of reading skills and practices, not to mention the smart lay-out and good quality of paper, all aiming at facilitating both students and teachers to successfully learn and teach reading, respectively. However, having qualified reading textbooks, teachers cannot take for granted that their students will directly appreciate reading and the textbook selected for the course because in some places extensive reading may not be part of the people's routine, and may not be considered to be very important by the authority. This article provides several useful techniques to take a full advantage of textbooks in A. M. Da Silva, Making the Best Use ofa Textbook 21 EFL reading classrooms in the aforementioned context.
The Cognitive Reading Strategies of ESL Students
0 In recent years, researchers have investigated the importance of the cognitive strategies students use while reading (Weaver 1979, Hansen 1980, Wilkinson 1980, Linden and Wittrock, 1981, Cohen 1983). The use of these strategies has been found to be effective in improving students'reading comprehension (Brown 1981, Baker and Brown 1984, Palinscar and Brown 1984, 1985). However, as Padron (1985a) has noted, most of these studies have been conducted with English monolinguals, and few have examined the reading strategies of ESL students (Padron 1984, 1985b). Since reading and language are closely linked (Carroll 1977), the difficulties bilinguals encounter in reading texts in their second language may differ from those experienced by monolinguals. Connor (1984), for example, found that there were differences in the way students process material written in the second language. The study reported here was conducted to determine whether there are differences in either the type or frequency of cognitive reading strategies reported by ESL and monolingual students. Individual interviews, which were audiotaped for analysis, were conducted with 23 Spanish-speaking ESL students and 15 English monolingual students from the third and fifth grade classes of an inner-city public school in a major Southwestern metropolis. Subjects were first administered the San Diego Quick Assessment (see Ekwall 1979), a graded word list to determine their independent reading levels. Students then read an appropriately matched passage from the Ekwall Reading Inventory Manual (Ekwall 1979), stopping at pre-marked intervals to explain the reading comprehension strategies they were using. Spanishspeaking students were allowed to respond in their native language so that
Assessing and Extending Comprehension: Monitoring Strategies in the Classroom.
Three comprehension strategies that seem viable for classroom instruction and application are: (1) summarization of text, (2) self-initiated questioning, and (3) differentiation of reader-based and text-based questions. Research supporting the instructional validity of each of these strategies will be discussed. ASSESSING AND EXTENDING COMPREHENSION: MONITORING STRATEGIES IN THE CLASSROOM Amos L. Hahn UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND Comprehension monitoring research has shown that youngeraged subjects and poor readers at all grade levels do not monitor their comprehension while reading text (Garner, 1981; Garner & Reis, 1981; Hare, 1981; Owings, Peterson, Bransford, Morris & Stein, 1980; Paris & Myers, 1981). Students do not know how to effectively summarize text, they do not know the difference between reader-based and text-based questions, and they often rate posi ti ve reading strategies as not being helpful. Researchers are now training subjects who are labeled as poor comprehenders or weak comprehension monitors to use effective text monitoring strategies. The results of these training studies are encouraging and hold great promise for the classroom teacher who is interested in helping students to better comprehend and remember text. As to the feasibility of incorporating monitoring instruction into the classroom curriculum, Pearson (1982) states "the systematic application of direct instructional approaches in the area of comprehension instruction has led to superior comprehension ... " (p. 10). Three comprehension monitoring strategies that seem viable for classroom instruction and application are: (1) summarization of text, (2) self-initiated questioning, and (3) differentiation of reader-based and text-based questions. Research supporting the instructional validity of each of these strategies will be discussed. Brown, Campione and Day (1981) identified six basic rules essential to summarization. The six rules are (1) deleting unnecessary or trivial material, ( 2 ) deleting material that is important but redundant, (3) substituting a superordinate term for a list of items, (4) substituting a superordinate term for components of an action, (5) selecting a topic sentence, and (6) inventing a topic sentence when none is provided. Day (1980) explored whether junior college aged subjects could be trained to use summarization rules. Subjects were divided into two groups: (1) average students with no reading or writing problems and (2) remedial students with normal reading ability but diagnosed as poor writers. Four instructional conditions were used which varied on a continuum from less explicit to most expli-