Reading in a foreign language in the classroom: what kind of reading strategies for which text genre?

Abstract

This article deals with reading in a foreign language (L2) at school and focuses more particularly on the influence of text genre on the choice of reading strategies. We implemented a didactic sequence in 9th level German classes in Geneva that allowed us to analyse the on line reading process through students’ interaction on reading tasks with two contrastive text genres (interview and narrative text). Results show that students focus on different text parts and follow different ways to construct their comprehension according to text genre. These differences can be explained by the functions of text genres which build up different types of cooperation between a reader and a text (Eco, 1985; Ricoeur, 1983).