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Volume 4 Number 3, Autumn 2007, Pages 1-240   


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Looking in From Within: Student Diaries as a Bridge to Understanding the Reading Minds

    Faizah A Majid


This paper examines the mental processes of the highly proficient and less proficient tertiary students in a Malaysian tertiary institution while reading academic texts through the use of student diaries. Being process oriented, the study conducted was treated as a case study which lasted in 14 weeks time. Four research participants with twelve journal entries each were involved during the data collection. The analysis of the data from the student diaries was conducted using the Constant Comparative Method (Wellington, 2000, p. 137). For triangulation purposes, the reading texts read by the participants were also collected for document analysis. The study has yielded interesting findings on how the different academic reading proficiency of the selected tertiary students was reflected by the difference in quality in their use of the identified academic reading strategies. These findings have direct implications on the teaching and learning of the English language for the tertiary students. Besides enlightening the trainers, curriculum designer and policy makers, the findings have also provided means and ways on how the tertiary students could be more reflective of their academic reading strategies and be able to regulate their academic reading strategies more effectively through the use of student diaries.

Keywords: student diaries, reading strategies, ESL