Résumé:
The present study aims at investigating the major reading difficulties faced by third year pupils in
Abd Elhamid Ben Badis Secondary School-Jijel, and their use of the reading strategies. Despite
the need for the ability to read in English, the common experience of English as a foreign
language teachers showed that most learners fail to achieve an adequate reading. For the sake of
figuring out the major reading problems and strategies, three means of data collection were used:
a reading comprehension test used to depict the comprehension level of the students and to elicit
their comprehension difficulties, a pupil questionnaire to check their use of the reading strategies,
in addition to think-aloud procedure to develop knowledge about learners actual strategy use in a
specific reading situation (Baccalaureate exam). The obtained results revealed that pupils
encounter different difficulties in the reading comprehension such as the lack of background
knowledge, vocabulary, and topic genre. In order to cope with these difficulties, third year
secondary school pupils applied a variety of reading strategies. The most significant finding in
this dissertation is that both proficient and poor readers adopt different strategies in the reading
process .Yet, low-achievers tend to read less effectively than high-achievers. They read the text in
isolated items rather than as a meaningful unit. Therefore, the construction of the text meaning
was not effectively executed.
