Sustaining Quality Tertiary Education via Critical Reading Skills and Language Learning Strategies

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Dineshwari Sundran, Gurnam Kaur Sidhu, Sathiamoorthy Kannan

Abstract

To sustain quality tertiary education students must possess the fundamental literacy skill of critical reading. This skill comes alongside with a repertoire of language learning strategies. Educationists have highlighted that a majority of tertiary students in Malaysia lack critical reading skills and this may be due to limited acquisition of language learning strategies. Therefore, the main aim of this study was to identify sustainability towards quality tertiary education through exploring the critical reading skills and language learning strategies of tertiary students in a private university in Malaysia. The study adopted a sequential exploratory research design with a mixed methods approach. The sample population comprised 108 tertiary students and data were collected through a three-pronged approach involving the use of a questionnaire, reading comprehension test and semi-structured interviews. The quantitative data were analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics via the SPSS version 26 whilst qualitative data were analysed using thematic analysis. The findings indicated that the tertiary students’ critical reading skills were rather limited and there was a significant difference based on gender and discipline of study. Furthermore, they displayed between low to average frequency use of language learning strategies.The findings of this study implies the need for educationists to equip tertiary students with the necessary critical reading skills and language learning strategies so that they can cope with academic needs in higher education and sustain the quality education at the tertiary level.

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