Many English as a foreign language (EFL) students fail to be
effective readers because they lack knowledge of vocabulary and
appropriate reading strategies. We believe that teaching proper
reading strategies can help second-language learners overcome their
reading problems, especially when the instruction begins in elementary
school. Effective reading strategies “provide the means to tackle complex
problems in more efficient ways” and allow students to build a “path to
comprehension” (McNamara 2009, 34).