Adapting the Hungarian version of the MARSI-R -examinationof L1 and L2 reading strategies among university students

Abstract

Reading to learn can present difficulties even to experienced readers (Palincsar & Brown, 1984). A possible way to help understanding and navigating in a text is using reading strategies. Since teachers are readers themselves, their own metacognitive knowledge of reading impacts their students as well (Soodal & et al., 2017). Therefore, it is important to assess how the future generation of teachers read and what support they need. Nevertheless, teacher trainees are neglected as a population in reading strategy research. Thus, the first step is to have an instrument which works well for this purpose. Therefore, the aim of the present research is twofold: on the one hand, validating the Hungarian version of MARSI-R (original English instrument: Mokhtari et al., 2018), and on the other, assessing teacher trainees’ first (L1) and foreign language (L2) reading strategy use. 166 teacher trainees filled in an anonymous, online questionnaire. MARSI-R served as the basis of the instrument. A few changes were made compared to the original. First, it was administered on-line, not on paper. Second, respondents were asked to decide about strategy statements regarding both L1 and L2 reading strategy use. In the latter case, two more strategies were added to the MARSI-R items, originally from SORS, an instrument targeting strategy when reading in L2 (Mokhtari & Sheorey). Validity and reliability measures included CFA, correlations and Cronbach’s alfa. Results show that the adaptation of the questionnaire can be considered successful,and can be used in further research. Teacher trainees’ reading strategy use is high or medium level. In L1, the most often used are problem-solving strategies followed by global reading strategies and the least favoured were support reading strategies. In L2 problem-solving strategies were also the most often reported, but followed by support reading strategies and the least often used were global reading strategies. Based on the results, a positive picture is emerging about teacher trainees’ reading strategy use. Nevertheless, the results also draw attention to further possibilities of development in this area.