The relationship between strategic reading instruction, student learning of L2-based reading strategies and L2 reading achievement Songyut Akkakoson Department of Languages, King Mongkut's University of Technology North Bangkok, Thailand This study investigates the relationship between strategic reading instruction, the process of learning second language-based reading strategies and English reading achievement for Thai university students of science and technology. In a course in reading general English texts for 16 weeks, 82 students were taught using a strate- gies-based approach (experimental cohort), whereas another 82 students were taught using a traditional, teacher-centred approach (control cohort). A pre-test/post-test research design was employed, and a portfolio approach was used to investigate the experimental cohort students’ process of learning reading strategies. The results showed that the experimental cohort outperformed the control cohort in the post- course standardised English test. The higher-level reading proficiency learners in the experimental cohort were also found to be better than their low-level peers at learning to use second language-based reading strategies effectively. Implications are discussed for alternative instructional practice of reading in English as a foreign language (EFL). Introduction Over the past three decades, much instructional research on first language (L1) and second language (L2) reading has focused on the strategies readers use in processing written texts (Chamot, 2005; Grabe, 2004; Plonsky, 2011; Taylor, Stevens & Asher, 2006). These read- ing strategies are ‘flexible plans for reasoning about how to remove blockages to meaning ... [which can be] ... applied thoughtfully, consciously, and adaptively’ (Duffy et al., 1986, p. 239). Using reading strategies suggests how readers conceive of a reading task, what to do to make meaning from texts and what to do when comprehension breaks down (Block, 1986; Macaro & Erler, 2008). So far, these strategies have been profiled and categorised by L1 and L2 reading researchers as bottom-up strategies (scanning and using context clues), top-down strategies (skimming and activating schemata), meta-cognitive strategies (monitoring comprehension and evaluating strategy use), social/affective strategies (discussing reading with others and cooperating with others in the reading tasks) and test-taking strategies (language use strategies and test-wiseness strategies; Block, 1986; Cohen, 1998; Macaro & Erler, 2008; Pressley, 2002a). Copyright © 2013 UKLA. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA Journal of Research in Reading, ISSN 0141-0423 DOI:10.1111/jrir.12004 Volume 36, Issue 4, 2013, pp 422–450