ISL (2020). Teaching strategies for reading comprehension… ISL, 14, 149-164.
experts and only gradually execute the functions autonomously. Therefore, responsibility for
comprehension activities is transferred to students as soon as possible, with help tailored to their
needs (Soriano-Ferrer et al., 2013).
It is to be considered that the role of the teacher–guide, rather than motivating, has to be
that of an assistant to the already motivated student: "being a guide, to a greater extent, requires
students to accept that they need one" (Prensky, 2011, p. 82). But studies carried out by Arenas-
Delgado et al. (2020) reveal a tendency for language teachers, the main mediators of reading in
the school context, not to carry out activities outside the class that invite readers in training to
immerse themselves in the world of reading, nor to recommend their participation in them. Thus,
the demonstration of the teacher as a competent reader impacts on the learning process and helps
the strategies that are applied achieve good results. However, each educator has their training and
adopts a pedagogical model based on behaviorism, cognitivism, or constructivism, or tends to
adopt simultaneous strategies from other pedagogical currents. In any case, as Hernández-Carlos
(1999) states, teacher training must be provided with the conceptual tools necessary to analyze
their environment and build knowledge relevant to social requirements. The teacher must become
a researcher of the community's needs and potentials; must be able to work as a team in carrying
out a shared task and reflect on their practice in order to transform or modify it, taking into account
the educational knowledge they have, that is, the set of knowledge they must recontextualize and
the tools they have available to carry out performing the student’s homework.
It should be noted that the design of the questionnaire was based on the thematic axes or
dimensions that the Third Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (TERCE) evaluated
reading comprehension, which consisted of text comprehension (text reading) with the three
processes: literal comprehension, inferential and critical, in addition to the metalinguistic and
theoretical dimension (mastery of concepts of language and literature). The Ministry of Education
of Ecuador (MINEDU), through the National Evaluation Institute (INEVAL), applied a
standardized test in 2013 based on the TERCE guidelines, the results of which were released in
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015. This was despite the fact that in 2010, MINEDU, in curriculum updating and strengthening,
proposed to emphasize in language and literature the development of skills, rather than the learning
of conceptual content, so that students use oral and written language to communicate effectively.
However, the students obtained a score below the average, according to TERCE 2015. In addition
to this approach, the instrument was related to the paradigms of constructivism, cognitivism, and
behaviorism. It is to be considered that the instrument has not been used in previous studies.
To reconstruct the message, the reader, fulfilling an active and participatory role, must
know how to read the clues left by the author. In this comprehensive process, reading strategies
are essential; so much so that the teacher must be in constant search of information about teaching
strategies and apply them in the classroom, contextualizing them, in order to improve them and
ensure that their students achieve meaningful learning.
At the same time, Paris et al. (1991) “offer six reasons why acquiring a strategic
competence in reading comprehension is relevant for the education and development of
schoolchildren” (p. 609). The reader must carry out a series of cognitive operations (abstraction,
analysis, synthesis, inference, prediction, and comparison) in which they put their knowledge,
interests, and strategies into play with the aspects that the text provides in certain circumstances.
In this way, reading becomes an interaction between the reader, text, and context (Santiago et al.,
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007). For this reason, it is important to promote critical and reflective readings in students that
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ISSN 2340-8685