Identifying the Critical Reading Strategies Employed by Iranian EFL Learners

Critical reading refers the way in which the students and teachers interact in the classroom to practice a higher form of comprehension. The study focuses on the introduction of critical reading strategies, and attempts to show how much Iranian EFL student use the level of thinking (analysis, synthesis, and evaluation) as expounded in the cognitive domain of Bloom's taxonomy during reading. The objective of this research is to identify the critical reading strategies employed by Iranian EFL students. In order to achieve the aim, this study employed the first phase of Stringer's Action Research Model that is Look. The qualitative approaches including observation checklists and semi-structured interviews were used for data gathering. The findings in relation to identify the critical reading strategies employed by Iranian EFL students reveal that students are generally familiar with reading strategies, however in most of the Iranian high school the reading strategies are presented as a set of isolated skills and seldom practice systematically in the actual context. Moreover, the results of the study show that critical reading strategies of skimming and scanning, as a means of processing the text, asking questions for better understanding, and taking notes are the brilliant critical reading strategies among Iranian EFL students. Therefore, students need to be exposed to reading strategies related to higher levels of knowledge in the cognitive domain.