The document discusses reading strategies and defines them as purposeful actions undertaken by learners to promote their knowledge and ability to use the target language. Reading strategies can be used before, during, and after reading and include determining the reading purpose, activating prior knowledge, self-questioning, summarizing, and identifying the main idea. Research observed that some strategies implicitly taught in schools underestimated students' knowledge and did not provide enough guidance before and after reading or allow students to monitor their comprehension. Effective strategies may differ for each individual student.

1. Reading strategies: According to Solé (1992), strategies are procedures or
actions with a specific objective, these actions requires monitoring, supervision,
assessment and implied changes when necessary. Furthermore, Tudor (1996)
defines strategies also as “purposeful activities undertaken by learners with the
goal of promoting their knowledge of an ability to use the target language” (p. 11).
Thus, strategies must be seen under this two definitions and for the purposes of
this study, as the actions students took to increase their understanding of a written
texts; actions that were done in three different moments: before, during and after
reading. The chart below shows some of the most common reading strategies:
PRE READING DURING READING AFTER READING
STRATEGIES STRATEGIES STRATEGIES
*Determine the reading
purposes *Self-questioning *Identify the main idea, the
*Activate the previews *Comprehension monitoring topic and kind of text
knowledge (think out loud while reading *Summaries
*Predictions based on the softly exclaiming "yes," *Question answering
titles, pictures and subtitles. "oops," or "wow.") *Graphic and semantic
*Question answering *Summarizing organizers.
*New vocabulary *Clarifying *Story structure
*Graphic and semantic * Predicting. * Self monitoring.
organizers.
Chart 1: Reading Strategies
Rincon’s research experience provide us with some of the problems
researchers observed in the public schools they visited in Valle del Cauca, related
to the use of reading comprehension strategies Rincon, G. & others (2003). It is
important to bear in mind that the strategies they observed were implicitly taught to

2. students. Rincon and her research team observed that some of the questions
asked by the teachers with the purposed to activate students’ previews knowledge
or to check for understanding, underestimated students’ knowledge; besides there
were not enough didactic sequences before and after reading; and finally students
did not have the chance to monitor and assess their reading process. This
problems detected through Rincon’s research experience, were taking into account
in the instructional design of the present study.
Also, when working with reading strategies, we must not forget that each
individual is different and therefore strategies are not recipes. What work for some
students may not work for others, being part of the teachers’ job then, to help
students discover what best works for them.
So far, I have approach the main constructs of reading comprehension,
scaffolding and reading strategies. I will now approach the concept of autonomous
learning since reading in this study is seen as a vehicle towards it. The better the
students learn to face the texts by their own, the more independent learners they
will be.