6. Encourage readers to transform strategies into skills. An important distinction can be made between strategies and skills (Kawai, Oxford, and Iran-Nejad, 2000). Strategies can be defined as conscious actions that learners take to achieve desired goals or objectives, while a skill is a strategy that has become automatic. This characterization under scores the active role that readers play in strategic reading. As learners consciously learn and practice specific reading strategies, the strategies move from conscious to unconscious, from strategy to skill For example, guessing the meaning of unknown vocabulary from context can be listed as both a strategy and a skill in reading texts. When a reader is first introduced to this concept and is practicing how to use context to guess the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary he or she is using a strategy. The use of the strategy is conscious during the learning and practice stages. As the ability guess unfamiliar vocabulary from context becomes automatic, the reader moves from using a conscious strategy to using an unconscious skill. The use of the skill takes place outside the direct consciousness of the reader. The goal for explicit strategy instruction is to move readers from conscious control of reading strategies to unconscious use of reading skills