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Makale Özeti:
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For many high school students learning English as a foreign language, the reading skills are considered as the most
important and challenging of the four language skills. Especially when long reading texts concerns. Based on outcomes, as
defined on a curriculum , it is expected that high school students who can read foreign languages are able to cope with
difficulties in reading foreign languages, understand what they read, and integrate new information they have acquired with
their background knowledge. Notwithstanding, students often express the difficulties they face while practicing reading
skills, mainly they struggle understanding long texts. The question that emerges at this point is how teachers can help high
school students in this process, thus facilitate them on being more efficient and independent readers. As the scientific
researches with respect to the reading skills concerns, it has been noticed that the theories have changed over time. Carrell
(1988) points out that the initial research on foreign language reading assessed reading as a process that begins with the
understanding of small parts of the text (letters, words, phrases, etc.) and proceeds with acquisition of the whole text. F rom
this point of view, during the reading process, the reader does not imply anything of his/her skill or knowledge, but merely
compose the written letters and combine them with verbal expressions - pronunciations. The reader is in a passive pos i tion;
they only alter symbols into verbal form. However, this model has been the target of various criticisms over time, and in
contrary to this theory it is argued that the reader has an effective role in the reading process. On the other hand Carrel
described reading as a "psycho-logical predictive game" and claimed that the reader's past knowledge and predictive abil i ty
enabled him/her to read during the reading process (Carrel, 1988).Furthermore Lesser Crouton (1997) notes that the result
of this change in theory from passive to active learners position during reading process is that language learning strategies
started to gain importance with the rapid growth of foreign language teaching. Eventually, the objective of many foreign
language teachers has begun be based on using language learning strategies, thus facilitate the language learning process
with the aim of educating independent learners who can take responsibility for their own language learning. In addition,
Oxford (1994) concluded that all strategy studies did not produce successful and ultimate outcomes that some strategy
training studies were effective in some skills and were not effective in other skills, so researches conducted that these
subjects had to be repeated and thus provide more stable information. When the use of strategy is examined within the
framework of reading skills, it has been found that successful readers use the strategies at a higher rate compared to the
weak readers and that the successful readers use the strategies consciously and effectively (Block, 1992; Carrell, 1998).
Moreover Carrell (1998) emphasizes that the effective use of reading strategies is closely related to metacognitive skill s and
meantime she defines the metacognition as "thinking about how the thinking process takes place and what is happening
during this process". Anderson (2003) states that the teaching of metacognitive skills described in this way is an effective
evaluation and management of teaching time.
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