Online reading strategy guidance in a foreign language: five case studies in French

This paper reports on an online guided reading program designed and developed by the authors, and implemented in class conditions. The program allows students to read a short story from a computer screen and obtain immediate support, in the form of suggested problem-solving strategies designed to help them overcome the lexical and grammatical difficulties commonly encountered by intermediate language students, at local text level, during the reading process. Based on the analysis of case studies of readers, the chief objective of this study is to gauge the pedagogical relevance of the guided reading program and suggest that it facilitates intermediate language students first encounters with literary texts. Copyright 2006 Debbie G.E. Ho. No part of this article may be reproduced by any means without the written consent of the publisher.