The present study investigated the implementation of explicit reading strategy
instruction for Vietnamese non-English major tertiary students. It first explored the
students‘ use of reading strategies in reading English level 3 texts before and after the
explicit strategy instruction (ESI). Also, it explored the students‘ perceptions of the
instruction. The study was a mixed-method design to explore how Vietnamese non-
English major students perceived the impacts of strategy instruction on reading
comprehension. Data were collected from forty-five non-English major students at a
university in Vietnam by means of questionnaires, group interviews and learning
reflections. First, one questionnaire about reported reading strategies use was
administered to 45 non-English major tertiary students in one class before the
intervention. Then the instruction was conducted for 6 weeks in which students were
taught explicitly previewing and predicting, skimming, scanning, guessing meaning of
the unknown words from the context and summarizing strategies. After the instruction,
students completed the same questionnaire again. Three semi-structured interviews
were conducted in groups of three to four students, and thirty-nine learning reflections
were collected to obtain in-depth information about the impact of the ESI. The
findings revealed that Vietnamese non-English major tertiary students used different
reading strategy categories in reading English level 3 texts from medium to high levels
before the instruction. Specifically, global strategies were preferred in the pre-reading
stage whereas problem-solving and local strategies were reported to be used more
frequently in the while- reading and post-reading stages. After the instruction, they
also reported using various reading strategies in four strategy categories namely
problem- solving, global, support and local strategies from a medium to high
frequency. In addition, the ESI was perceived to be cognitively beneficial, through
students‘ reported heightened awareness of using reading strategies in reading
comprehension, expanded reading strategy repertoire, greater reading fluency, and
higher reading score. From a non-cognitive affective perspective, students reported
that the ESI motivated them to read, and read with a higher level of confidence, and
become more autonomous in reading in English.
The study offers implications for teachers, students and materials writers in
teaching and learning the English reading skill in non-English major learning contexts
and perhaps in other settings.