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 Effect of ESL Students' Perceptions of Their Cognitive Strategies on Reading Achievement
U Although a few studies have investigated the cognitive reading strategies used by Hispanic ESL students (Block, 1986; Knight, Padron, & Waxman, 1985), the effect of these students' use of strategies on reading achievement has not been specifically examined. Furthermore, most of these studies have used think-aloud procedures and verbal reports to identify reading strategies, a methodology that has been questioned because students sometimes have difficulty assessing metacognitive processes (Afflerbach & Johnston, 1984; Ericsson & Simon, 1984). On the other hand, a few studies have successfully used self-report instruments to identify the cognitive reading strategies used by students (Hahn, 1984; Paris & Myers, 1981). These instruments, however, have not been used with Hispanic ESL students, nor have they specifically examined the relationship between students' reported use of cognitive reading strategies and performance on measures of reading comprehension.
The Comprehension Strategies of Second Language Readers
Think-aloud protocols, a version of verbal report in which participants state their thoughts and behaviors, have become increasingly popular as a means of studying the comprehension processes of native English speakers. The study reported in this article used think-alouds to examine the comprehension strategies used by college-level students-both native speakers of English and nonnative speakers--enrolled in remedial reading classes as they read material from a college textbook. "Poor" readers (those who had failed the college's reading proficiency test) were chosen for study because they are the ones at whom college remedial reading programs are aimed. Furthermore, their use of comprehension strategies has not attained the degree of automaticity found in fluent readers. Thus, they may be more aware of how they solve the problems they encounter as they read. Some of the strategies used by the ESL and native-speaking readers in the study are described. Strategy use is related to measures of memory and comprehension and to academic performance, and implications for teaching are discussed. The thoughts that wander or rush through the minds of readers, the searches and struggles for meaning, the reflections and associations, are hidden from the outside observer. Yet this struggle and search for control are the core of reading comprehension. For teachers, knowledge of the components and management of this internal process is extremely important. Without it, educators must resort to designing reading programs based on intuitions and guesses about students' problems. Without it, classroom teachers are left commiserating with Eskey (1973), who described the "maddening experience of having a student who appears to understand every sentence and yet cannot answer the simplest question about a passage as a whole" (p. 177). Knowledge about the process, not just the product of reading, is needed if we are to move