ACTUAL POETRY READING STRATEGIES BY ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDENTS.

This study provides a deep investigation on the process of reading while the participants interact with poetry. The readers‟ responses during the think-aloud sessions show how they read and understand poetry. The assumption in this study is that readers‟ expressed words and actions provide information about their thinking as well as the belief of the significance of reading strategies in teaching and comprehending literature.


ISSN: 2320-5407
Int. J. Adv. Res. 6(6), 953-975 954 because poetry can be a wonderful source of enhancing reading and analytical skills. Students will learn to pay close attention to text, since meaning in poetry can often be hidden in the grammar and word choice that the poet used. The ultimate goal for this study is that the readers are able to recognize poetry, understand its purpose, and use their acquired knowledge in their lives.
Poetry provides the reader with a sense of aesthetic pleasure, it brightens senses, connects us with ourselves and other people, and makes us think synthetically because of the concise language that is used in making it, such a language makes poetry to convey a lot in a short form. That is why understanding poetry is not as easy as understanding other literary genres as the words in poetry have both denotative and connotative meanings. These words are informative as well as expressive to convey the poet's tone and attitude.
Robert Frost, the famous American twentieth century poet defined poetry as "the kind of thing poets write." On the other hand, Louis Armstrong , another well-known American twentieth century poet wrote "Man, if you gotta ask, you"ll never know." Therefore, there is no clear cut definition for the terms of poem and poetry since it is the language of experience ( Thorne and Reinhardt, 2008); in this regard, the words have a sense that their meanings can be understood through the feelings and senses that the reader get while reading. However for this study, the word poem is used for one piece of literary work which is autonomously meaningful by itself using the elevated language to express a highly imaginative subject. Whereas poetry is the general term for the whole genre of rhythmical and metrical forms or verses.
Reading poetry helps discover profound truths that we do not realize we knew. Poetry creates feelings and thoughts about complex issues. It is not only a means for expression, but also a way of knowing and viewing matters through a new perspective. Poetry illuminates, clarifies and states what is being said. It also intends to persuade, influence the attitude of the reader, move the emotions of the reader and in the end strive to alter convictions or points of view. The language use of poetry helps in viewing the world with new eyes. That is why poetry readers become skilful in language usage. They get an understanding of the way words hold complex and subtle meanings and experience the pleasure in stitching words together. The language skills they learn helps them a lot not only in area of literature reading but also in life.
The English reading instruction in most EFL countries is based on the traditional approach. Usually, English is taught as a foreign language beginning in high school and continues to the university level generally for three hours per week. English is one of the very influential subjects at school time at all levels. The content of the EFL textbooks and Ministry of Education guidelines reveals that EFL studies is based on the students' future need to read in English or translate English texts to Persian. Reading and translation are also the most emphasized skills at EFL studies at the university where the students study English for academic purposes (EAP). Accordingly, in many EFL countries, the orientation tends to a combination of grammar-translation and audiolingual methods (Eslami-Rasekh and Valizadeh, 2004).
The curriculum is mainly top-down and product-oriented, directed by the Ministry of Education through monitoring "educational groups" at various organizational levels. There is not much exposure to English out of the class for EFL students as Eslami-Rasekh and Valizadeh (2004) explain that rare English programs are on social media in EFL countries but recently several factors like advancements in technology, rapid increasing use of the Internet and satellite, and a fast growth of interest in going to private language institutes affected people to learn English language (Ebrahimi, 2016; Ebrahimi and Jiar 2018b). In EFL countries, English teachers use reading strategies which usually include decoding of words with great emphasis on "correct" reading, and vocabulary definitions. The texts include a collection of passages from various authors and poets. Teachers emphasize on correct reading and use one of the students for demonstration. After such a long and tedious procedure, there are some comprehension questions that are answered by few students and are finalized by the teacher's 'correct' response. EFL students are trained in such an educational system in which English class is mainly a reading course, therefore they are not as acquainted as the English as a first language readers to the reading strategies.
It is beyond the scope of this study to investigate the reasons of such school-based practices; however, the important relevant issue to this study is to know how readers read literary texts, especially poetry. Therefore, the major objective of this research is to explore the poetry reading processes.

955
As the researcher was an English lecturer at a university, it is natural that she becomes enthusiastic on the theories of teaching reading and knowing how to read for a life-long learning. In other words, she would like to understand the factors leading to more poetry understanding of postgraduate students, in particular and all EFL learners in general. During her teaching experiences, she observed her students' learning processes and outcomes. She assumed that several factors would lead to success or failure in their academic work. For example, motivation could be an influential factor in students' poetry understanding. Other factors would be students' aptitude, their innate ability, and their academic background. The question in her mind was whether there are other variables that could contribute to the learners' achievement; and if so, what they are.
The imposing breadth of the subject of this research is due to the researcher's huge interest in teaching English literature; however, the itself is not on poetries but on the strategies that the readers employ while reading poetry. The reflections in this study starts from poetry at many angles, while at other points they come back to the nature of reading, especially literature reading with the aim of delineating and testing poetry. Although the main interest in this study is on poetries, reading of literary texts are discussed at some points of the work. Therefore, literary criticism of poetry might not always be the central point of the present study, but the main concern is the reading strategies of such pieces of aesthetic art.
Poetries like any other type of texts, are made of words. Poetry has the reputation of an esoteric art, but an effect on the constructedness of poetries is to make them more accessible but not necessarily easy. Thorne and Reinhardt (2008) says that the function of poetry is to practice the mysterious power of language. This makes this belief in the poetry readers that they might not fully understand a poem, the meaning that it targets to communicate, and the language the poet uses to communicate the meaning. Therefore, comprehension seems difficult because of the richness of the language the poet uses. As a result, the readers might have various invention of meanings. This is the reason that makes reading of poetry different from the reading of any other kind of texts, and therefore, reading poetry can be considered as an art. In such an aesthetic triad of poet, poem, and reader, this research mainly follows the focus on the role of the readers and the strategies that the readers use in reading poetry, therefore the main research question in this study is "what are the actual strategies that the EFL postgraduate students use while reading English poetry?" Theoretical Framework:-This study situates itself within theories of reading (Schemata theory) and theories of understanding literary texts (Transactional theory and Reader response theory). It is deemed critical that the three types of theories are integrated for a number of reasons as follows: The area of reading strategies is well developed and current research tends to use top-down and bottom-up information processing as the thematic framework (Schemata theory).
Studies of literary texts tend to focus on analysis of genres, stylistics, and general understanding of the literary text. However, study on strategies of reading poetry is rare, this researcher acknowledges the importance of Transactional theory and Reader response theory, and believes that these theories are able to explain the behaviour of learners in reading poetry.
To describe the above mentioned theories, it is worth explaining each briefly as there are some studies, which describe the strategies that L2 readers use: "top-down" and "bottom-up" information processing. Block (1986) also categorizes strategies into general comprehension strategies, which deal with comprehension gathering, and monitoring that are top-down reader-centred strategies, and local strategies which involved in the readers" intention to comprehend linguistic units, and are known as bottom-up text-centred strategies.
In this study, reading strategies are illustrated based on Block's (1986) assumption that good readers have the ability to think aloud and verbalize their thoughts while they are completely aware of their use of different strategies. The method which is decided to be applied while doing this research is the think-aloud method which is widely popular and known in this type of research as the suitable method in gathering data on the process of reading.
One theory related to this study is Reader response theory (Rosenblatt, 1988). According to the reader response theory, readers are active creatures in producing their own unique interpretation of the text. Reader response theory 956 points out that reading process is both subjective and objective. Some critics of this theory believe that reading is a bi-active process in a way that it can be affected partly by literary work and partly by the readers" controlling part.
The other point about Reader-Response theory is that it explains that the work is actually the reader's experience. Reader-Response theorists expect the reader to sense the text in a way that is relevant to his experiences. The researcher believes that such kind of sources of information clarifies the vision as the interpreter. Since this study focuses on individual poetry reading of the students it can be related to Reader Response theory since the individual readers would use their own experience in their interpretation of the poems.
The next theory is Transactional theory which applies to literature teaching. According to Rosenblatt (1988), the meaning does not reside ready-made in the text or the reader, but it happens in the course of the transaction between the reader and the text. It means that without this relationship between the reader and the literary text, no meaning would be constructed. The act of reading is a transaction involving a particular reader and particular words at a particular time in a particular context. According to transactional theory, interpretation of a text depends on the context in which reader reads the passage as well as his/her background knowledge about that specific issue. Therefore, interpretation of the same text for different readers in different contexts may be different from each other because of their background knowledge and their special knowledge about their special context that they live in.
Based on this theory, the transactional nature of language and the concepts of transaction and selective attention illuminates reading process. In simpler words, this theory emphasises on the relationship between the reader and the literary texts or poems in case of this study. Based on this theory, the poem is what happens in the mind of the reader and it is processed after he reads the prints. This is the time when the words start functioning in the mind and transact with the text. Reading strategies are a part of this process in the mind.
The other theory is Schema theory. According to Rumelhart (1985) based on the schema theory reading comprehension is an interactive process between the text and the reader"s prior knowledge. This theory modifies a psycholinguistic model in which EFL/ESL reader"s background knowledge interacts with conceptual abilities and process strategies to produce comprehension. According to the Schema Theory, any text, either spoken or written, does not by itself carry meaning, rather a text only provides directions for listener's or readers to retrieve or construct from their own, previously acquired knowledge.
As can be seen in Figure 1 below, the three literary theories are interconnected to each other by the significant role of the reader as the main element in meaning making of the text. In this study also, the role of individual readers is emphasised by the separate think aloud sessions for each poetry reader. As a result of the elaboration above, the following theoretical framework is suggested for this study in Figure 1.  This study provides a deep investigation on the process of reading while the participants interact with poetry. The readers" responses during the think-aloud sessions show how they read and understand poetry. The assumption in this study is that readers" expressed words and actions provide information about their thinking as well as the belief of the significance of reading strategies in teaching and comprehending literature.

Review of Literature:-
There is no clear-cut definition or categorization for poetry as is elaborated by Thorne and Reinhardt (2008). Although, the main function of poetry is entertainment, a poet can either implicitly or explicitly convey a message about an important issue by creating his unique varied manipulated language. However, it does not mean that the readers are not able to feel the poem that they read. Poetry is a means to express material senses by an imaginative language that reconfigures nature via modes of projection such as personification. If one wants to know poetry, defining its essence is not helpful. However, it is helpful to explain why poetry, but not the other literary genres, is appropriate for this study. According to Ebrahimi and Jiar (2018a), poetry is a highly accessible literature because in a short while one can use a poem to connect students to the topic in a way that they remember it all the time. Rosenblatt (2005) suggests that when we read a poem, we draw on our reservoir of past experience with others and the world.
Even interactive English language learners might have difficulty in learning the target language (Ebrahimi and Zaidah, 2017). Moreover, there is a growth in language development by less interactive English language learners who stay quiet and observe more. The poetry-based activities are useful for both highly interactive and less interactive students. Students who observe more than interact may respond with as much evidence of personal understanding as those who are more interactive. Allowing the students to make response choices, such as between texts that were written in old English language and texts that were written in modern English language may help keep their affective filters lower and in turn, their comfort levels higher (Freeman and Freeman, 2006).
The other important point in this study is about letting the students free to express in either their L1 or L2 in reading the poetries, the study demonstrates the students' voice and its resonance with others can show the most used reading strategies. However, it is proven (Freeman, and Freeman, 2006) that if students' L1 is used as a scaffold in understanding a poetry, English language learners may be less inhibited to use L2.
In addition to the above mentioned theories, still there are not much practitioner accounts of poetry usage with English language learners in English language classes. Although there have been a number of case studies on English language learners in mainstream, bilingual, and ESOL classrooms that used poetry (Holmes and Moulton, 2001; Barbieri, 2002;Freeman and Freeman, 2006), there are only a few studies on teaching poetry with reliable results (Ebrahimi, 2012b). Some of these studies are case studies of teachers who used literature and poems to teach English to their students (Barbieri, 2002;Fay and Whaley, 2004;Freeman and Freeman, 2006). Barbieri (2002) observes poetry writing of the Chinese English language learners. She asked them to explore poetry as a means of English learning and also to let them examine the environment. She asks the students to read aloud the poems to hear the poems in different voices. After that, they were asked to draw their image of the poems. Then, she encouraged the students to write about the poetry in their journals. Students wrote their feelings about the poetry. They also copied their favourite lines for more reflection and illustration. By help of published poetries as sample, students wrote their poems, which they shared with their classmates at the end of the class. The conclusion of Barbieri (2002) is that the poems that students read and wrote help them remember any of their images instantly by heart.
Freeman and Freeman (2006) observe a dual language poetry class in which Spanish language poetry and the same poems in Spanish and English translations were being taught. In this observation, the students react to the poems through illustration and writing them. The teacher and students decide to study poets with their poems. They also decide to make generalizations about poems individually and collectively in the classroom, and then compare them with poets' intentions. This shows that among English language learners, poetry is introduced through dual languages and is studied and responded by the students individually or in a group.
In case of reading strategies in this study, the definition of reading strategy follows Mokhtari and Sheorey"s (2002) descriptions of which reading strategies mean 1) intentional, carefully planned techniques by which readers monitor or manage their reading, 2) actions and procedures that the readers use while working directly with a text, and 3) basic support mechanisms intended to aid the readers in comprehending the text. The reading strategy scheme that is used in this study is SPRS (Ebrahimi and Zainal, 2016).
Moreover, there are different divisions in categorizing reading strategies but this study used Mokhtari and Sheorey (2002) study in developing the categories as is shown in Table 1. Although these divisions use different 959 terminologies, all of them have similar implications and that is their underlying framework which is the two primary reading models of "top-down" and "bottom-up" processing.
This study follows Ebrahimi and Zainal's (2016) SPRS which uses another classification scheme to classify the reading strategies. SPRS classifies the reading strategies to three different types of strategies: Global, Problemsolving, and Support strategies.

Methodology:-
The purpose of this study is to identify the reading strategies used by EFL postgraduate readers when they read authentic poetry. Therefore for this purpose, the students' use of reading strategies was identified by think aloud protocols.

Research Design:-
This study is a qualitative design using think aloud instrument. Research proves that proficiency has an effect on the second or foreign language reading (Bernhardt, 2005;Koda, 2007). Therefore there is a transfer or interaction between the proficiency of the readers and their reading strategy use. In this study, all of participants were selected purposefully to be in their postgraduate program in TESL.
The study was conducted with 10 EFL postgraduate TESL students in Malaysia who were chosen randomly with a literature background. It means that they have a Bachelor degree in English language and literature studying about four years on English poetry and other English literature related subjects at the university. All of them signed a consent form for participating in the study.
The researcher decided to take 10 EFL participants in the think aloud sessions based on the saturation point and the previous literature. The researcher planned to choose the participants homogeneously to be sure that the data is generalizable. In the qualitative research design, the researcher decided to employ think-aloud reading sessions to understand selected participants' reading strategies. When the researcher gathered the data, she transcribed and then analysed them using either SPSS for statistical part or describing the for the qualitative analysis.

Research Instrument:-
The instrument used in this study is think-aloud protocol, with the tool of two poems as the texts. In protocol, it is important for the readers to have a sample session; therefore, a sample poetry for practice session, Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1897), was introduced by the researcher to the participants doing think-aloud; so that the participants would be familiar with what the researcher expected them to do on the main poems. In this session, the subjects were informed about the aim of the study and were given instructions on how to think aloud. Therefore, the procedure consisted of two stages: practice session and the think aloud for the main study.
After the practice session, the think aloud protocol session was conducted to obtain the data for the main study. Students read two texts and were asked to verbalize and say aloud anything that they thought about using either their native language, English, or both languages. There was not any restrictions for the participants to express their thoughts in Persian, English, or both.
In order to control the order effect, the arrangement was to ask five students read a poem first, while the other five were asked to read the other poem first. In this research the think aloud method is used to get the data from the participants. This method is useful to get the data regarding cognitive processes such as reading strategy identification. The think-aloud reports were tape recorded. Each session took approximately 15-40 minutes. After the sessions were completed, the recorded tapes were transcribed manually and analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively using SPSS. In Table 1   2. note taking it reminds me of those concepts 3. using prior knowledge I think that for this one I want to read it all and then go back to it 4. previewing poetry before reading Sasha explained that she reads aloud to be sure to understand every detail correctly.
5. reading aloud I should have looked at the title before.
6. checking if content fits purpose If I don't understand a part of the text, I read it more slowly for myself to be able to concentrate and have more time to think. 7. reading slowly and carefully the first four lines serve as an introduction of this poem. 8. noting poetry characteristics Shin was the only reader whose eyes were moving all over the poem continuously.
9. trying to stay focused -10. underlining I always jump to the next points or skip the part I know and I always spend more time on the more difficult parts, 11. adjusting reading rate This is a difficult point, he refers to his life, maybe, … , 12. determining what to read closely I have to think about this now.
13. paying close attention - 14. using text features Zara said that she had pauses in her reading because she was thinking of something in the poems.

pausing and thinking
They are reliable only if they are really 'true lovers' as is mentioned above. 16. using context clues "The short-lived holiness" as "he says that this short lives is a holy, ahahah, care about our life and only true lovers can understand, that life is very short". 17. paraphrasing "I can see an old person with beard" in explaining "With eyes severe and beard of formal cut" 18. visualizing information don"t agree with all the stages of human life that is introduced in these poems. There are some other missing stages as well. 19

making judgment and opinion
Sampling Procedure:-The participants of this study were selected based on convenient sampling which is a non-probability sampling technique (Creswell, 2009). It means that the samples were selected because they were available to the researcher in Malaysia.
They are selected among TESL students since most TESL students have a higher level of proficiency compared to other major students. This group was selected by an convenient sampling since they were either from masters or 961 doctorate programs in Malaysia where it was convenient to take the data. In order to get the qualitative data, she organized the think-aloud sessions with 10 postgraduate TESL students for whom English was a foreign language. These EFL students have been studying English for at least eleven to twenty years; that is, they have learned English as a compulsory course during their school days. Moreover, since they are EFL students who study abroad at the university and one of the requirements of joining the faculty was to have a band of at least 7 in IELTS, it is assumed that their level of English proficiency is already high and they are homogeneous in terms of general English proficiency.
The students who participated in think-aloud sessions were randomly chosen from the population who participated in the quantitative data collection. These students all have a bachelor in English literature and therefore studied about four years of English literature before joining the postgraduate school. Therefore, they are homogeneous in terms of Literary knowledge and understanding. Each of these students has their session separately, so that it would be the first time for them to read the poems. In this case, they would employ the authentic reading strategies freshly on their first sitting of poetry reading. This is a good point because as Pressley and Afflerbach (1995) explain, if the readers do not know the topic beforehand, it helps the researcher capture strategies that readers use when their comprehension breaks down and information in the text does not make sense.
The number of protocol participants is ten, considering the other studies which used think-aloud protocol as the main data collection instrument. Few among many of such studies are Hijikata et al. (2013) with two participants, Alsheikh and Mokhtari (2011) with ten participants, Yau (2009), Meray (2003), and Boyan (2002) each with four participants, and Block (1986) with nine participants.

Data Collection:-
The procedure of data collection in this study consists of two phases namely pre-reading talks and the practice session, and qualitative data collection using Think-aloud protocol. Each phase is described more in depth below.

Pre-reading Talk (practice session):-
At the opening of each think-aloud session, the participants were invited to a few pre-reading, open-ended discussions as warm-up to establish a good rapport. This discussion prompt them to talk about their reading habits in general and their knowledge about the topic of the poetry which they were about to read in particular.
The friendly talks before the main session could prepare the readers to feel relaxed and do the task without anxiety or stress. In these conversations the researcher and each participant talked about their reading habits, poetry, and literature reading and any open-ended discussions. After that the researcher did a short think aloud session as a sample for the participant and explained what think aloud means so that the participants are totally clear.
For example in "Whenever I read English, I usually use the dictionary, so that I can understand the text I am reading more accurately", the participant declares that she is aware that she uses the dictionary each time she encounters an unknown word or new vocabulary in the texts. She continues that the reason she prefers to use the dictionary is that she believes it can help her understand the meaning easily and more accurately. In another example in "... Um, now that you read this poem, I know what you want...", the participant said that she became clear about the aim of the research after the short instructional explanations and the practice session.

Data Collection Using Think Aloud:-
Thinking aloud was introduced and explained to the participants through doing a practice by the researcher. She read and showed each of the participants how to think aloud by this example while the participants were provided with the verbal and written think-aloud instructions. This practice engaged the participants in a kind of think-aloud exercise before their main practice. The practice helped them understand and do thinking aloud by themselves. After that, they were asked to do their think-aloud on the two poems.
The time of the think-aloud session was set at any time that the participants feel more comfortable with, so that they can present without worries or interruption. Moreover, the place of the sessions was at the library or the room where the participants feel comfortable to reduce any anxiety or tension for the session; on the other hand, this researcher wishes to have her think-aloud session in a cosy and familiar place for the participants.

962
The participants were asked to sit fronting the wall in a way that the door is at their back, so that they would not be distracted by any outside interference. To omit any interference from outside people to stop knocking on the door, the researcher hanged a "reading in process" sign on the door to stop people from interrupting the session. She also asked each participant to put their phones aside so that if they had any call during the session, it would not cut their attention. At the beginning of each session, the researcher provided the participants with a pen and a dictionary so that if they were in need of using them, they could easily access to them. The lines of the poems are numbered by each five lines to reduce the probability of unexpected skips of the lines. During the reading, whenever the participant had a long pause of more than about fifteen seconds, the researcher would show him/her a talk sign which was a simple white page with nothing written on that.
The researcher purposefully selected a ten participants for the think-aloud sessions. Each session takes about ten minutes of warm-up and practice, and about twenty to forty minutes of reading the poetries. The whole sessions were tape-recorded to be transcribed later.

Data Analysis:-
The procedure of data analysis of this study consists of the data from the think aloud protocols for the actual poetry reading strategies. As explained earlier, this instrument is considered as an effective tool in collecting the data (Ebrahimi and Zainal, 2015).
The recorded tape of the think-aloud sessions were transcribed and analysed by the researcher. This researcher recognized the strategies that the readers of this research use with the help of the transcriptions or listening to the tapes again. The analysis consisted of getting the data, transcribing the data, and analysing them. The data from each participant was separately analysed and was looked for commonalities and differences of the reading strategies among the participants manually.
Transcribing data manually, according to Erickson (1986), provides researchers with more opportunity to notice discomforting evidence and uncovered issues than using computer softwares. The data were derived from the taperecording of the pre-reading warm-up and think aloud protocols. Few samples are as follows: In the first examples, "ok…[he is going to an online dictionary to search for the word "Mewling."]… hmm", the participant is employing the strategy of using reference materials since he tries to check the meaning of an unknown word from the dictionnary. In the second example, "let me see what it means, wait a minute..., ok, probably it means that...", the participant take a few seconds to think more deeply about the line to understand it so he uses pausing and thinking strategy. Then, she guesses the meaning of the text since she is not sure because she uses the word "probably," this indicates the use of predicting poetry meaning.
The think aloud protocols were tape recorded and transcribed after the sessions to get analysed. The reading strategies in this study were all taken based on these recordings. Some examples are shown in the box below. For the first example, the researcher noticed that the participant went to an online dictionary to check the meaning of a vocabulary that he did not know its meaning to understand the poetry better. Think-aloud protocol was used by researchers to get in-depth information on strategy use (He, 2008). This researcher also utilized think-aloud protocol as a primary instrument for getting information about the participants" strategy use while reading poetry in English.
The table of the strategies taken from the transcription of the think aloud protocol as samples can be found in Table  3. To complete this table, the researcher conducts the inter-rater reliability test by asking two other experts in the area of reading strategies to check if the strategies that she extracted through the think aloud protocol are right. Kappa value also can show if the raters' opinion matches with the researcher's strategy extracts.
Before the main data collection starts, the participants were trained on how to do the think-aloud protocols at the beginning of the session which helps them to have an idea of how the researcher expects them to read the poems. The students have the chance to choose to complete the think-aloud task in either English or their mother tongue. Seng, and Hashim (2006) say that most participants produce verbal protocols in their native languages, in other words, L2 learners tend to use L1, especially when facing difficult parts while reading, which supports the important role of L1 use in L2 readers" comprehension processes.

963
The researcher conducted think-aloud sessions with ten participants separately, the readers randomly were prompted regarding their reading text whenever it was needed without disturbing the flow of their thoughts as think aloud protocol should not be influenced by any questions. During the session, participants were encouraged to think aloud about what they are doing and thinking. Additional prompts are given to them, when the researcher determines, to remind their think-aloud task or to hear more about thinking processes (e.g., Would you tell me what you are thinking?) Then, participants were asked to verbalize their thinking processes while reading. They were allowed to look back to their reading poems and think aloud further on their reading. Obviously, the duration of these session varies from participant to participant, because there are a lot of factors that lets a reader talk less or more.
The other point in doing think aloud in this research was that while participants are often asked to do think-aloud with prompts, in this study participants were not asked to give prompts if it is not necessary as the researcher does not wish to meddle in the process of the participants' thinking. At times when there was a more than normal silent only, the researcher would invite them to keep talking by "tell me what you are thinking of," or "is there anything else you want to add".

Results and Discussion:-
The researcher's interest in doing this study on EFL university students originates from her personal experience in teaching EFL university students in the past, and it has been increased by her teaching experience of ESL university students in recent years. In her classes, she recognized that there is a huge need for EFL university students to learn how to read and understand English poetry properly. However, it was not until she started her doctoral program in Malaysia that she began to learn about strategies and their relation to academic success. This is the belief of the researcher that although English proficiency is being improved in the society, English teachers have a lot more to do in terms of strategy instruction to the students in order to equip them with the acceptable level of English capacity for their academic performance and future life. However, generally EFL university students, who have been under English instruction for at least 11 years on average (the same average years of the participants of this study), still struggle with learning and reading English poems (Fountas and Pinnell, 2001).
This study employs think aloud as the qualitative measurement tool. Therefore, 10 participants were chosen from the population of TESL postgraduate students with literature background in Malaysia for think aloud sessions. All of the participants of the study are homogeneous in terms of language proficiency.
Each think aloud session took about half an hour on average consisting the reading strategy instruction briefly which includes a practice section at the beginning of each session. It was a tool for the think aloud session with an intention to understand the participants' English poetry reading experience and their reading strategy awareness.
To answer the question, first we need to measure the mean and standard deviation of the strategies that the Think aloud session participants used while they were reading English poetry to detect the actual strategies that they use in poetry reading. Table 2 below shows the high response frequency of each strategies in detail. The table is calculated using SPSS software. The full table with all strategies ranging from high to low can be seen in Table 8. These strategies are from SPRS (Ebrahimi and Zainal, 2016). The high range is selected for the strategies with over the mean of 4 since there is a jump between the item rank 8 with mean of 2.8 and item rank 7 with mean of 4. The same reason lead to the selection of low and medium range between item 16 as a medium range with mean of 1.1 and item 15 as low range with mean of .8. therefore, if the strategy is used by more than 8 participants out of 10, that strategy was considered as high, if between 4 to 6 participants used it, it was considered as medium, and if less than 2 participants used it, it was considered as low range. In short, the mean above 3 is high range, the mean between 1 and 4 is medium, and the mean less than 1 is low.
964 Therefore, as a whole the analysis indicates that the occurrence of 7 strategies can be considered as high. They are paraphrasing, analysing and evaluating, re-reading, predicting poetry meaning, making judgment and opinion, using context clues, and pausing and thinking. Similar strategies are reported as the highly ranked strategies by many other researchers such as Sheorey and Mokhtari (2001) and Malcolm (2009).
As Table 5 illustrates clearly, paraphrasing as a support strategy is the leading actual strategy that readers use in their poetry reading with 157 out of 733 times of usage. Alone, this strategy allocates about one fifth or more accurately 21.42% of the total used strategies to itself. Moreover, it has the only two digit mean score among all strategies (Mean = 15.7, SD = 7.3). This huge difference between paraphrasing and other strategies happens because most students have been taught poetry since their fist grades by paraphrasing and making meaning by explanation of each line by their teachers. Therefore, once that they have been asked to do think aloud, their first automatic impression were doing paraphrase.
After that analysing and evaluating, a global strategy, with 87 times stands at the second rank of actual strategies with the mean score of 8.7 and SD of 5.68. This is not surprising since according to Bloom's (1956) Taxonomy, these strategies are always the basis for understanding. Moreover, as postgraduate students, the participants tend to look at everything critically.
Re-reading as a problem solving strategy with 58 times of usage is at the third highest rank with the mean of 5.8 and SD of 5.05. They allocate more than 11% and 7% of the total strategies that the participants used in their poetry reading. That is logical that the students are taught to analyse and evaluate poetries line by line and once there is no understanding, they have to read again till they understand what the poetry tries to convey. As a result, high usage of these two strategies one after the other occurs in poetry reading of EFL students.
Three Global strategies of predicting poetry meaning (M = 5.4, SD = 4.62), making judgment and opinion (M = 4.8, SD = 4.69), and using context clues (M = 4.2, SD = 3.19) are at the next ranks. They are used about 7%, 6%, and 5% respectively which still can be considered a high rank among all strategies. This can also show that students tend to use global strategies more often than other categories as their highly used strategies. Only by this first six strategies, more than 60% of the total strategies are used by EFL readers.
Pausing and thinking is a Problem solving strategy which with 40 times of usage among 733 times is at the seventh rank. It means that totally the students used this strategy for more than 5% in their poetry reading. This can still be considered as one of the most common strategies because the readers need to concentrate and think to be able to build the meanings and it might take few seconds for them to do so. The mean score of usage of this strategy is 4 while the SD is 3.19.
The next 11 strategies are considered moderately used by the participants. It is logical that right after pausing and thinking is checking understanding strategy at the eighth rank with 28 times of usage which leads to 2.8 mean score and 2.3 SD. The moderately used strategies are checking understanding, finding relationship among poetry ideas, getting information, using prior knowledge, reading aloud, reading slowly and carefully, asking oneself questions, paying close attention, previewing poetry before reading, guessing meaning of unknown words, and determining what to read closely. All these strategies are related to critical and efferent stances in reading poetry. This means that readers tend to actively think logically about poems than getting emotional. These strategies show that readers tend 965 to know about the content of poems and the messages that they convey. Therefore, they use strategies that helps them in this matter such as paying attention about all minute points in the poems or activating their own background knowledge to facilitate their reading and understanding process. This is a helpful issue in Reader-response approach to reading poetry. The second strategy together with the next three strategies directly deal with getting meaning or meaning making with each of them take about 3% of the total strategies. The order of these strategies is finding relationship among poetry ideas (M = 2.6, SD = 2.41), getting information (M = 2.5, SD = 2.68), and finally using prior knowledge (M = 2.3, SD = 1.83) at the ninth, tenth, and eleventh rank. The close number of usage among these three strategies shows how relevant the readers think they are and how often they use the strategies.
Not with a large distance from the above three strategies stands the twelfth strategy, reading aloud. This support strategy is the last strategy that has been used over twenty times totally with the mean score of 2.1 and SD of 3.73. This strategy together with next five strategies take about 2% of the total strategy usage each.
Standing right after reading aloud, are reading slowly and carefully (M = 1.8, SD = 1.49), paying close attention (M = 1.8, SD = 1.93), and asking oneself questions (M = 1.8, SD = 1.87) at the thirteenth rank of strategies all with 18 times of usage in total. This order is not surprising since the three strategies are so similar to each other and if they were standing apart it would seem much of a surprise. This interrelation may be because the participants are thinking about the meanings of a word or part that they do not know or they may be analysing the meanings deeply that is why they read slowly to find the answers of their own questions. Usually readers conduct a special procedure to think and analyse a poem. The first step in reading poetry relates to the speed of reading a poem that should be done slowly. Stanton (2009) explains that faster reading helps in better understanding of the text but in the case of reading poetry elements like complexity, style, and unfamiliar words are some of the elements that slow down the process of reading poetry. Consequently, by reading the poetry slowly enough one can make sure that it has been understood by the reader clearly. However, one cannot read a poem too slowly. The best way for reading a poem is to pause between the title of the poem and first line of the poem. Readers should read a poem in a normal and relaxed reading style. Poems should be read as clearly and normally as possible. Readers should just stop by punctuations.
The fourteenth rank strategy goes to previewing poetry before reading, another Global strategy with (M = 1.7, SD = 2). A total 16 times of usage of this strategy reveals that EFL readers get help from their background knowledge to understand the message of the lines. It means that they tend to try to guess meaning of unknown words by help of their knowledge which is the very exact next strategy (M = 1.4, SD = 1.95).
Determining what to read closely is the last strategy that was used by EFL readers more than ten times but it is the first strategy that they used less than 2% of the total number of times at the same time (M = 1.1, SD = 1.2). It shows that the readers decide which parts are understandable for them and which parts are more difficult and need a more 966 close reading. In other words, EFL readers are aware of their level of understanding in different parts of the poetry. This awareness makes them check if content fits their purpose of reading poetry or not. Not surprisingly this strategy is right after determining what to read closely.
The next 12 strategies occurred at a low frequency. They are checking if content fits purpose, getting emotionally engaged, visualizing information,adjusting reading rate, noting poetry characteristics, translating from English to L1, setting purpose for poetry reading, thinking in both languages, trying to stay focused, using text features, note taking, underlining. It means that postgraduate readers mainly tend to be critical or think about the facts and information in what they read rather than getting emotionally involved in them. In addition, the strategies that require getting involved in text features like using pen or paper are not preferred by postgraduate students as they are more professional and proficient readers who use their mind and rely on it in solving problems and thinking. Therefore, it is not surprising if the strategies in Table 5 be introduced in the low rank. Getting emotionally engaged (M = 0.9, SD = 1.1) followed by checking if content fits purpose are the strategy that has been used less than ten times and has the mean score of less than 1 as well (M = 0.8, SD = 1.13). They stand at the seventeenth and eighteenth rank orders with a usage which is about only one percent of the total strategies for each.
The last seven strategies occupy less than one percent of the total number of strategies each. It is interesting to know that each of the categories has at least three strategies in the last third of the list. The only category with four strategies at this part is Support category with the least mean score among all three categories. Visualizing information, a Problem solving strategy, is one of these rare strategies with only six times (M = 0.6, SD = 0.7) of occurrence. It shows that EFL readers do not visualize information in their real poetry reading practice.
Standing at the twentieth rank is adjusting the reading rate with five times of occurrence (M = 0.5, SD = 0.97). This low rank shows that the students read with the same rate all over the poetry. The reason may be that they want to pay more attention to the poetry lines and make sure that they thoroughly understand the meanings. However, they do not adjust their reading speed often.
EFL readers rarely, about four times only, note poetry characteristics such as length and organization of lines in particular and poetry itself in general (M = 0.4, SD = 0.97). This shows that readers are mainly concerned about the function or meaning of the text than its form. In this regard, they use any tool such as translation from English to their mother tongue. However, as advanced EFL readers they tend to deal with English rather than direct translation and it happens only three times (M = 0.3, SD = 0.48).
EFL readers very rarely (M = 0.2, SD = 0.42) set a purpose for poetry reading for themselves before they start reading, meaning that they usually read the poetry first and then they try to build its meaning. Therefore, it seems that they read poetry with no expectation of the meaning because maybe unusual messages are normal to happen in poetry.

967
Data shows that EFL poetry readers rarely translate to their mother tongue, three times in total. This is a strong support for the other Support strategy of thinking in both languages to happen even less, two times only (M = 0.2, SD = 0.42). Advanced EFL poetry readers tend to use English to read and understand English poetry and they do not show much interest to use their L1. The reason can be the fact that at their level of proficiency, English is automatically and unconsciously being used.
EFL readers very rarely try to stay focused, only once of occurrence (M = 0.1, SD = 0.32). They do not really need to try for that purpose because their high level of English proficiency helps them to stay in line and do not divert so much from the main idea of the poetry.
There are three strategies at the end of the list with the readers never ever used them in their poetry reading. Much surprisingly, they are using text features, note taking, and underlining. This shows that these strategies are not important to them or they do not find them useful. It is interesting to know that at their English level, readers do not use the strategies that deal in one way or another with pens. They do not use text features means that they do not draw tables, figures, or pictures to increase their understanding of the English poetry. They never took any note, neither they underline or circle information in the lines. This happened although all participants were provided with a pencil before the reading session begin so that in case they need to jot down or mark anything they can be able to do so. In general, table 6 below shows an overview of all actual poetry reading strategies by EFL readers: In general based on think aloud data as Table 9 below shows, Global category of strategies with 318 times out of 733 times possesses the first rank of strategy usage among EFL poetry readers. In other research such as Alhaqbani and Riazi (2012) also the same finding is reported. In addition, their tendency to use Support strategies with 227 times is higher than Problem solving strategies which were used 157 times which is only half of the times that global strategies were used at the think aloud sessions.
The results show that for EFL poetry readers it is much more important to get the message and the main idea of the poetry before anything. That is why they use global strategies such as analysing and evaluating, predicting poetry meaning, making judgment and opinion, or using context clues much more than the other two categories of strategies.
Using support strategies such as paraphrasing in the second rank is another proof that the readers use any supportive strategy to help them understand the lines of poetry better and finally they try their best to get more details out of the text by involving problem solving strategies such as re-reading and pausing and thinking only if it is necessary. This table shows clearly that postgraduate poetry readers tend to use global, support, and problem solving strategies respectively. However, they believe that they use problem solving, global, and support strategies respectively. It means that they are aware of the importance of problem solving strategies but in reality consciously or unconsciously they use these strategies less than others. For them global strategies were at the medium importance while in reality they used these strategies more than the other categories of strategies in general. Overall, Support strategies were at the least attention for the postgraduate students in reading poetry while actually they used them in the second rank closely to the first ranked global strategies and far from the third ranked problem solving strategies. The findings exhibit a significant difference in terms of the categories of strategy use and perception by EFL postgraduate students in reading poetry. The difference in the order of categories can show that our students do not really know themselves what exactly suits them best and helps them and this is the duty of the researchers and teachers to collaboratively work with each other to find the most effective methods to assist the students (Beers, 2003).
The actual mean is taken from the Think aloud protocols that the 10 participants of this study actually read the two poems. As presented in Table 10, the strategies are arranged from the most used strategies to the least used ones based on findings of the Think-aloud protocol. Specifically, the top five for each group are in bold. Therefore, the most used strategies for a more effective poetry reading and understanding are as explained in more depth below. Based on Table 8, paraphrasing is the highest used strategy by the students. The second highly used strategy in think aloud protocol is analysing and evaluating which similarly to the first strategy the poetry readers' opinion regarding the usage of this strategy is different than their highly usage. This strategy sits at the fifteenth rank on the basis of the readers' opinion.
At the third place in poetry reading strategy is re-reading which the readers believe they use it as the forth highly used strategy in reading poetry. It is interesting that the readers believe they use predicting poetry meaning as the third highly used strategy but in reality it is the fourth highly used strategy.
The fifth strategy that the poetry readers were actually using was making judgment and opinion. However, this is the strategy that they believed they use most of all in reading poetry. Using context clues is the sixth strategy that readers actually use in their poetry reading and their belief of using this strategy is close to reality by having the ninth rank in their claim of usage.
This is not the case with the pausing and thinking as the seventh ranked strategy in actual situation since the students' perception of their own usage of this strategy is ranked on the twentieth place which is quite different in reality. Contrary to this strategy, the next two strategies have similar situation in terms of actual usage of the strategies and perception. Eighth strategy in actual situation, checking understanding, is believed to be the fourteenth strategy and the ninth strategy in actual situation, finding relationship among poetry ideas, is the sixteenth believed strategy.
The cases of the tenth and eleventh strategies are similar to each other. In real situation, getting emotionally engaged and using prior knowledge are the tenth and the eleventh strategies; however the readers' belief is that they are the second and fifth strategies that they use. There is a drastic change about the twelfth strategy in actual situation, reading aloud. Which is students claim that they use it as the twenty second strategy but they really employ it much more.
There are three strategies that together are at the thirteenth rank. Paying close attention and reading slowly and carefully which are the strategies with the same situation like the ninth and tenth strategies. The students thought that they use them as the sixth and seventh strategies. On the other hand, asking oneself questions is the other actual thirteenth strategy that surprisingly the students believed they rarely use it and they thought of it to be the twenty fifth strategy.
Previewing poetry before reading is another strategy that like the third and fourth strategies, the readers' belief and their action is close to each other. They thought it is the twelfth strategy while in reality they used it as their fourteenth strategy.

970
The fifteenth strategy is guessing meaning of unknown words which the readers' perception was that they use it as the eighth strategy. They also thought that the sixteenth strategy, determining what to read closely, would be their eleventh strategy in poetry reading.
Next two strategies as strategies ranked nineteenth and twentieth which has a very close mean score to each other and both are considered to be used in the tenth rank by the readers. These strategies are visualizing information and adjusting reading rate.
Strategies ranked twenty one and twenty two are noting poetry characteristics and translating from English to L1. The other strategies ranked twenty three in actual ranking as the seventeenth are setting purpose for poetry reading and thinking in both languages.
The most surprising strategy is trying to stay focused which in reality it is at the top bottom by being the last strategy that the students used and placed at the twenty fourth place.
The last three strategies are ranked twenty five as the last strategy in the actual ranking which the students never used them in reading poetry but they claimed that they use underlining as the nineteenth strategy, note taking as the twenty fourth strategy, and using text features as the twenty sixth strategy. These are all Support strategies that need physical text involvement and maybe the participants of postgraduate students do this type of strategies mentally without using a pen or the text on the paper.

Summary:-
To answer the research question, the data from the think aloud protocol showed that EFL students tend to use Global, followed by Support, and finally Problem solving strategies. Being postgraduate students, it is expected that the highly mind oriented and educated students have tendency to holistic or top-down strategies rather than local or bottom-up strategies. This is what other research also verifies about proficient, more successful, or good readers (Mokhtari and Reichard, 2004).
However, their perception is different and they believe that they use Problem solving strategies, followed by Global, and then Support strategies. This might be the case since the students think that they use helping strategies during reading whenever they face a difficulty in understanding. This finding is supported by other researchers who reached the same result (Islam et al., 2015).
In case of individual strategies, in reality postgraduate students use paraphrasing as the most frequent strategy. The reason is not clear again but it can be because in many EFL countries they have always studied poetry by paraphrasing and they are used to read poetry by over-using this strategy.
On the basis of Ebrahimi and Zainal (2016) categorization of poetry reading strategies called SPRS, the 30 strategies of this study on poetry were classified to Problem-solving, Support, and Global categories. The order of the poetry reading strategies in each category is presented below.
Problem-Solving: This type of strategies assist readers manage their reading when there is a block in the comprehension process. The below poetry reading strategies are in this category: 1. re-reading 2. pausing and thinking 3. reading slowly and carefully 4. paying close attention 5. guessing meaning of unknown words 6. getting emotionally engaged 7. visualizing information 8. adjusting reading rate 9. trying to stay focused Support: Earlier it was explained that Support reading strategies help readers in maintaining receptiveness to reading by using materials and actions that support a comprehensible reading. The following strategies are in the support poetry reading strategy category: 971 1. paraphrasing 2. finding relationship among poetry ideas 3. reading aloud 4. asking oneself questions 5. translating from English to L1 6. thinking in both languages 7. note taking 8. underlining Global: As explained in previous chapters, Global reading strategies help readers in planning and controlling their reading and are usually used before reading. The below reading strategies are the global poetry reading strategies: 1. analysing and evaluating 2. predicting poetry meaning 3. making judgment and opinion 4. using context clues 5. checking understanding 6. getting information 7. using prior knowledge 8. previewing poetry before reading 9. determining what to read closely 10. checking if content fits purpose 11. noting poetry characteristics 12. setting purpose for poetry reading 13. using text features EFL postgraduate students prefer to employ Problem solving, Support, and Global strategies respectively in poetry reading. In case of individual strategies for example, students actually use paraphrasing as the most frequent strategy. The reason is not clear but the reason may be because the postgraduate students use to think about every thing deeply and therefore they think that they act the same in reading poetry as well and they make their opinion and judgment in poetry reading as well as reading in general. The reason for using paraphrasing is also not investigated by this study but it can be because in many ESL countries students study poetry by paraphrasing and reading a poem means to paraphrase it to get the meaning and therefore they use to read poetry by paraphrasing.
The other finding of the study is that the actual strategies that the EFL postgraduate students tend to use more in their poetry reading are paraphrasing, analysing and evaluating, re-reading, predicting poetry meaning, making judgment and opinion, using context clues, pausing and thinking respectively. On the other hand, they believe that they use making judgment and opinion, getting information, predicting poetry meaning, re-reading, trying to stay focused, using prior knowledge, paying close attention. getting emotionally engaged, reading slowly and carefully, guessing meaning of unknown words.
The result of the present study correspond with many other research such as Mokhtari and Reichard (2002). There are also some other research that show readers with higher level of proficiency use more Global or top-down strategies (Mokhtari and Sheorey, 2002), although they do not question the fact that Problem solving strategies are so much helpful in reading. Only to be aware of the strategies does not guarantee their effective usage, but the readers have to be familiarized with their appropriate usage. As a result, practice can help to improve knowledge on reading strategies. In order to help readers to have a more efficient reading performance, they can be taught to use reading strategies.
In short, findings and results from qualitative method can be shown in the schematic diagram below in Figure 2.

Conclusion:-
This study aimed to explore the awareness or actual use of reading strategies between EFL postgraduate university students while reading poetry. Ten of them participated in a think aloud session so that their real strategies can be checked. Therefore, considering the research question, the following highlights can be taken from this study: This study provides evidence that reading strategy use, which has been proven to be effective for L1 and L2 students (Ebrahimi, 2012a), can also be effective for Foreign language students and ease poetry reading process for them. The most prominent feature of the present study is that while most other studies on reading strategy use measure the usage of strategies only by using questionnaires and present quantitative reports, this study enjoys qualitative descriptions and explanations of how reading strategy is used by EFL students in their poetry reading experience in reality. The use of think aloud protocol helped to find using dictionary (Support), reading fast (problem solving), and reading quietly and silently (problem solving) as the strategies that do not present in SPRS.
The main effective actual categories on poetry reading strategies that this study intended to recognize are Problem solving, Support, and Global strategies respectively. This study also identified the main actual strategies in reading poetry as predicting poetry meaning, re-reading, and making judgment and opinion.
However, there are some other effective strategies in poetry reading which are not as significant as the above mentioned strategies. For example asking oneself questions is used in poetry reading by the participants several times but not as many times as some other strategies like the main mentioned ones. In general, participants tended to read aloud many times in reading poetries. Although the participants used this strategy highly but the use of this strategy was mainly limited to the times that they would face any difficulty in understanding the poems.