Roles of reading strategies, vocabulary size, and self-efficacy in influencing reading comprehension performance among Iraqi secondary school EFL learners

Reading comprehension in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) is a complex, multifaceted cognitive process influenced by linguistic, strategic, and affective factors. Recent research has shown that reading strategies, reading self-efficacy, and vocabulary size play an important role in students’ reading comprehension. However, limited research has explored how these factors influence reading comprehension performance among Iraqi secondary school EFL learners. There was also a paucity of work that used focus group discussions that probed information about the particular educational and contextual factors that contribute to students’ challenges in reading comprehension. For this purpose, this study employed both quantitative and qualitative data collection approaches. In the quantitative study, a total of 180 Iraqi secondary school EFL students were recruited. All participants completed two surveys: the reading strategies survey and self-efficacy survey, and two tests: the vocabulary size test and reading comprehension test. In the qualitative study, a group of six participants who took part in the quantitative data were invited to attend focus group discussions, with the aim of probing further insights about the reading comprehension challenges faced by EFL students. The quantitative study was administered across two scheduled sessions that lasted about 45 minutes each, whereas the qualitative focus group discussions were conducted in Arabic and took about 40 minutes to complete. To analyse the quantitative data, the study used descriptive statistics to analyse participants’ reading strategy and self-efficacy beliefs, and to determine students’ vocabulary size, whereas the mediation and regression analyses were used to assess the relationship between students’ reading strategies, self-efficacy, vocabulary size, and reading comprehension. The general results showed that the problem-solving reading strategy was the most frequently used reading strategy among Iraqi secondary school EFL learners. It had a positive and significant effect on reading comprehension performance. The participants’ vocabulary size was around 2500 words on average, and there was a positive and significant relationship between vocabulary size and reading performance. Participants’ self-efficacy also proved to be not only a positive and significant predictor of reading comprehension performance, but also a significant mediator between reading strategies and reading performance. The transcribed qualitative discussions further showed that students’ reading comprehension challenges were mainly attributed to five main factors: limited vocabulary, lack of interest, inadequate language practice, insufficient support, and ineffective teaching approach. This study has discussed the collected data in the light of reading models and empirical findings of the literature and offered context-specific insights for reading instruction in Iraq, and how reading comprehension challenges among EFL learners can be overcome more generally.