Implications for further research

The patterns depicted in the study can be regarded as research questions to be investigated in future think-aloud studies. It might be useful to continue Stage 3 of the study (see Chapter 4 in this part). Drawing on Britton's (1994) grammar, this stage explored the content of the representations of the texts and resulted in identifying various types of propositions that the subjects constructed while reading the texts. The analysis did not aim to find differences between students’ reading in Polish and their reading in English. It could be interesting to follow this question by means of the research techniques applied at this stage. For example, one could look at the number of final and partial propositions in reading in L1 and FL.

The study (Stage 1) allowed me to gain some insight into how the students constructed comprehension on the basis of the text and how they interpreted and evaluated the texts. This showed how the learners developed the propositional text-base and how they constructed the situation model in relation to the text they were reading. More think-aloud research is needed to explore the two ways of approaching the text in relation to both L1 and FL.

The results (Stage 1 and 2) indicated the more significant role of higher-level skills (demonstrated as a focus on understanding text ideas) in reading in Polish and lower-level skills (demonstrated as a focus on vocabulary) in reading in English.