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INVESTIGATION OF INTERACTIONAL ONLINE READING STRATEGIES: A CASE STUDY OF IRANIAN POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS WITH INTERNAL LOCUS OF CONTROL

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
As stated by Strevens (1977) and Wallace et al. (2010), reading is one of the most important components of language learning. There can be improvement in learning as long as the learners increased their reading habits. Wallace (2010) and Nuttall (2005) believe that the reason for difficulty learning language is reading texts. “Reading is one of the most important activities in language classes” (Kirby & Savage, 2008). Strevens (1977) also emphasized the importance of reading to learners for two reasons: First, this skill provides learners the access to a language experience. The second reason is to present a window into the normal means of continuing the learners' personal education with reading skills.
Rivers (1981) proposes that reading is the most important activity in any language class; not only as a source of information and a pleasurable activity, but also as a means of consolidating and extending one's knowledge of the language.
Rumelhart (1977) considered reading to be an interactive process. This process highlighted the role of the reader as an active participant who tries to make sense of the text. This means that different sources of knowledge interact with each other to help the reader to interpret the text being read. It is important to know interactional reading strategies since researchers believe that this will enable learners to read more efficiently. Previous studies identified reading strategies and listed them into four groups. Reading strategies were categorized as: cognitive, metacognitive, socio-effective and navigational. The reading process requires and is controlled by higher order of mental process (Chun & Plass, 1997; Hanson-Smith, 2003). This higher order of mental process is called metacognition which is identified as thinking about thinking (Anderson, 2003, 2005; Flavell, 1976) and it plays an important role in the reading process. On the other hand, (Paris & Winograd 1990) used metacognitive strategies to identify readers’ performance which guides learners to regulate their strategy usage and evaluate their reading.
Metacognitive reading strategies show the way for learners to think, perform reading and successfully understand the text. Research conducted on metacognitive reading strategies could identify what the expert readers accomplish (Cook, 2001; Macaro, 2001, Bazerman, 1985, Pressley & Afflerbach 1995). Studies showed that understanding text does not occur automatically. Researchers considered the metacognitive strategy as an interactional, procedural, purposeful, willful and facilitative nature. The reader allocates specific attention to control, monitor, and evaluate the reading process (Pressley &Afflerbach 1995, Brown et al. 1996, Pressley 2002). Therefore, the reader interacts and purposefully invokes metacognitive strategies.
Traditionally, learning and teaching necessitate a face-to-face mode of interaction, which commonly takes place within the four walls of physical classrooms. However, with the widespread adoption of the internet, computer-mediated communication (CMC) technology, such as online forums, have widened the realm of communication possibilities. Reading strategy research conducted about interactional reading strategies during the last thirty years used print-based texts, but there are a few studies concerning metacognitive and interactional process in online reading strategies used by learners to read online texts. Many studies highlighted the importance of an online reading platform to enhance students’ reading abilities by interacting and collaborating with each other (Amelia et al., 2009; Berhannudin & Wan FaraAdlina, 2009; Harlina, 2008; Lee & The, 2009; Malachi, 2006; Masputeriah, 2006; Nuraihan & Ainol, 2006; Supyan, 2009).
Online reading platform is more popular among learners because of its multiple information and representation platform. In language learning, online text has an impact on learning enhancement and increases the importance of creating new instructions and investigation that can affect reading comprehension (Romero et al., 2000; Jung 2001). Online reading platforms can also be replaced or used to support face-to-face interactions with students in the classroom (Johnson & Aragon 2003; Inoue, 2007; Hussin, 2011). Online reading platforms provide an environment for readers to interact with each other within this environment to promote their reading comprehension. This platform helps learners to interact with each other through discussion rooms, chat rooms and online forums as well as to discuss questions, helping to enhance their knowledge and reading comprehension processes. Online forums also create an opportunity for students to brainstorm and discuss different issues relevant to the subjects they read (Sharma & Mishra 2007, Yusof & Amir 2007, Hussin 2011). Since online platforms replace face-to-face interaction with students’ online interaction within the learning systems, there exists a similar target for the students to navigate for learning purposes. However, students’ role can be exchanged with the roles of the teachers and both of them can play the roles of motivators to interact. Online forums also make students be more active participants in challenges toward understanding the gaps of reading texts created by their lack of knowledge or understanding. Additionally, students’ regular correspondence with each other promote their learning.
Online reading texts need skills and strategies to perform efficiently in an online platform (Berkowitz et al., 2002). However, despite the impact of online platforms on reading performance, there is little knowledge about the interactional reading strategy process used by EFL readers to read an online text. Therefore, more researches need to address an understanding of metacognitive process via interactional reading strategies (Henry, 2005).
Considering the role of interactional strategies in reading online texts, it is the aim of this study to investigate the interactional reading strategies used by the Iranian university-level students with internal locus of control; this refers to the most qualified independent readers.

This section discusses the Iranian educational system reforms, the previous studies about reading strategies used by Iranian students, and the gap which makes this topic valuable.

Iranian Educational System

The Ministry of Higher Education in Iran oversees the operation of all institutions of Higher education in Iran. He plans to implement and increase the use of technology in the educational system. The Ministry stresses the importance of information and communication technology (ICT) and the use of the internet in education to provide citizens with new scientific knowledge and online skills. The application of modern educational equipment and technologies such as online learning is developing significantly with schools using the internet rapidly rising. Some schools in Tehran and other large cities are linked to the Internet. Many projects have recently been launched to link high schools and universities through the internet. Johari (2002) believes that the impact of technology will give a new dimension to the quality of our education system. Emergence of new technology in educational systems encourages universities and schools to start changing their printed texts into electronic texts in a revolution towards e-learning. Since the English language is the medium of reading online articles and books, reading skills and strategies to read online English texts plays an important role in learning. Today, reading has always been one of the most important skills in the Iranian educational system. Reading research communities seek effective strategies in reading to facilitate student comprehension of online reading texts. Different researchers have done studies to help foreign and second language readers solve their comprehension problems (Chun et. al., 1997; Snow, 2002; Sweet & Snow, 2003; Coiro, 2003; Coiro et. al., 2007; Huang et.al., ,2009; Ahmadi et. al., 2013; Cornoldi & Oakhill 2013).
The structure of the educational system under this Ministry is divided into the following cycles: Pre-school cycle, Middle cycle, Secondary Education cycle and Higher Education cycle. In this system, English as a foreign language is introduced to students from middle cycle. Universities in Iran also make a variety of efforts to improve their students‘ English proficiency by offering English classes focused on speaking, listening, reading, and writing. In Iran, reading comprehension is viewed as the aim of the language learning program in secondary and higher education (Farhady & Mirhassani, 2001). Birjandi (2006) believes that in Iran, reading is considered a language learning process due to the fact that teachers use reading as a material to teach vocabulary and grammar. However, reading is only recently considered as a communicative process to make reading meaningful. It shows that the educational system in Iran is trying to fulfill students’ needs. This aim made different countries benefited from distance education systems refined by their cultural, social and educational conditions; Iran was not exceptional.
Approximately three decade ago, the first distance university was established in Iran. Payame Noor University (PNU) is the first distance university and also the greatest higher education institution in Iran where the main portion of its students study in social science fields. The university enrolls students in bachelor, master and doctoral degree levels. The university used slides and electronic books for the students before the internet was introduced, creating some changes to the educational system. The university has begun to facilitate the process of learning with the collaboration of students and the application of online systems. The internet allows educational systems to become worldwide since Iranian learners can join this system from everywhere in the country. Payame Noor University started to register students online and sent materials to them through internet. The students have access to the internet and log on at specific times. Teachers are connected to the internet and teach the materials to the students. The learning process is conducted with the teachers and the students interacting with their reading materials. The university was also established to develop research and to plan for the promotion of relevant research activities. As a result, universities websites use academic online texts that are not in Persian, but in English. Therefore, university students are now required to have online reading proficiency levels sufficient to comprehend the academic online reading texts. However, the online reading system requires students be dependent on their teachers if they are not able to perform independently through online reading platforms. Since online reading systems supply the materials and the instructions, it makes students with inadequate skills more dependent on the teachers. Therefore, it is essential to prepare students to perform independently without the presence of teachers in the online environment for life-long reading.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

The internet is a new, fast-growing environment for learning. The accessibility of this technology to different populations is inevitable. Roughly 40% of the world’s population is now connected online (Internet World stats: Usage and population statistics, 2014). The wide impact of globalization and the online texts have become a major source of input for second language readers in online learning (Huang et al., 2009). The use of online reading as a source of data for academic purposes is eminent in the world as the universities and institutions of higher learning in developing countries are not excluded. Iran is one of the countries where this invention pushed the authorities into initiating and budgeting for online reading projects.
Getting computers into universities and making texts online was relatively easy, but reading the online texts is a greater challenge. The workforce is concerned with the usage of online reading platforms for maximum productivity and creativity (Hawkins et al., 2002). To do so, there is a need to be aware of online reading strategies for comprehension.
Payame Noor University (PNU) arranged English classes for the first and second semester for each level of study. Students have to pass a three credit course called General English. The goal of these reading classes is to improve students’ vocabulary and reading comprehension skills, allowing them to be more successful in college courses that require students to read academic texts. The syllabus presented for this course mainly emphasizes the reading skills with vocabulary as one of the basic components. Since the main focus of higher education recently shifted to making meaning of reading tasks, the reading process requires that students use a variety of strategies, including interactional reading strategies (Baker & Brown, 1984; Palincsar & Brown, 1984).
The online environment has a variety of features, more than printed reading materials. Therefore, students using online reading texts need to use new reading strategies according to their reading styles. This makes students feel reluctant to learn new strategies, but they need to make attempts to blend themselves with new technology for more online learning benefits. Moreover, the worth of online reading platforms encourages most of the universities, teachers and students to focus more on new learning environments. New reading strategies which are different from traditional reading strategies are needed in order for online readers to generate questions, and to locate, evaluate, synthesize, and communicate information on the Internet (Coiro & Dobler, 2007; Margolin et. al., 2013). To be more successful in this environment, students need to equip themselves with relevant skills. Watkins and Corry (2013) point out that the importance of reading skills in academic platforms has led to considerable research on reading in a second language. The real experience of most the students in online reading is that their learning is failing while they cannot keep up with reading online texts. As there is no useful structure for learning, equipping universities with computers and the internet is not working in Iran. An application of reading strategies in an online environment is still a challenging issue in the Iranian educational system.
There are few studies that focus on the online reading strategies used by Iranian postgraduate students. These studies investigated and found differences between good readers and poor readers, showing that good readers are more strategic than poor readers (Nokhbeh, Rousta and MirSaeed, 2012). Their study shows that the advantage of good readers over poor readers depends on strategy-based instruction that helps good readers to perform in an online reading process. Also, the study conducted by Eslami-Rasekh and Valizadeh (2004) showed that more than 60% of Iranian students are satisfied to follow the teachers’ medium of learning through the internet which include using online dictionaries, videos, photos, graphs, and search engines. Their study shows that Iranian students are dependent on the teacher instructions and they have no creativity in reading strategy use. On the other hand, the universities in Iran are focusing more on online texts and the new plan will be applied to independent learning settings the Iranian EFL students will encounter with online texts. More research is needed to investigate the way that online metacognitive reading strategies help students to be independent readers. More studies are needed to identify the online metacognitive reading strategies used by independent readers.
In the second language learning platform, researchers investigated different strategies for online reading comprehension which include academic reading texts (Bromeley & Tan, 2006). However, reading problems remain unsolved, especially for EFL learners (Hassany, 1995; Birjandi et al., 2006; Eslami et al., 2006; Omidinia, 2009; Rajabi, 2009). As mentioned earlier, most Iranian learners are dependent on the texts given to them with teaching instruction. This encourages them to use only a single reading strategy since they are not exposed to multiple reading strategies. The reason may be due to the lack of research to understand how to use reading strategies and the way to teach and guide readers in order to apply them in an online setting independently. To be an active and independent learner, the students need to know how to navigate their own metacognitive reading strategies and to interact in an online environment. In online reading, many may not understand how to treat online platforms as a reading tool and how to use interactional reading strategies. Researchers believe that there is still a need to explore and understand how interactional reading strategies are used by proficient independent readers in online platforms in order to help the less proficient readers in reading online. The researcher intends to illustrate the case from another perspective.
The present study aims to shed light on the use of interactional online reading strategies by postgraduate learners with internal locus of control in online reading platforms. The previous discussions showed there is a strong relationship between interactional reading strategies used by proficient independent readers. Internal locus of a control student is considered a student with a high intrinsic interest in learning. Those with a high internal locus believe their will and behavior is directed by their own internal decisions and thus feels as if they have more influence on their learning (Jatkevicius, 2010). It implies that students with internal locus of control are more likely to process information with deep or strategic learning approaches. Since strategic effort and ability is the reason for the success of learners with internal locus of control, studying their interactional reading strategies unsed in online reading platforms would represent a unique case. It is hoped the findings will contribute to the existing body of knowledge of CMC and Online learning.
The main idea targets the role of the teacher who is not effective role or has no presence in interactions with the students online.
The information to be gathered from this study will be beneficial to assist teachers andeducators understand L2 users and their interactional reading problems. It is hoped that suggestions can be made to enhance the quality of independent learning to develop learners’ metacognitive performance in interacting with other participants more appropriately and effectively.
The researcher aims to analyze interactional online reading strategies among postgraduate Iranian learners with internal locus of control. This study attempts to investigate how readers with internal locus of control navigate interactional strategies to read online reading texts and its effects on their comprehension and independency to the teachers’ presence.

OBJECTIVES OF RESEARCH

Studies on online metacognitive reading strategies revealed that there are various strategies employed by ESL learners to interact in an online platform (Nor Fariza 2008; Haziah1993). This study aims to illustrate on the application of interactional online reading strategies by EFL learners with internal locus of control. It seeks to know how the use of interactional strategies help learner in their comprehension level and their independency in an online reading platform . By knowing their application of interactional online reading strategies, the researcher will be able to find out differences or similarities with other online interactional reading studies and offline reading interactions that have been carried out previously by other researchers.
1. To identifydifferent types of interactional online reading strategies used by Iranian postgraduate learners with internal locus of control to read an online academic text.
2. To explore the way postgraduate Iranian learners with internal locus of control use interactional online reading strategies.
3. To examine the way interactional online reading strategies effect on reading comprehension of Iranian learners with internal locus of control.
4. To find out the extent interactional online reading strategies enhance level of independency of teachers’ presence in Iranian learners with internal locus of control.
Focusing on these purposes, this study raised some questions to be answered. These questions penetrate the specific features of these objectives and raise a new point of view into the online reading environments. Parts of this study focused on the questions raised from the objectives the researcher aimed to achieve.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Based on the aforementioned hypotheses the following questions were made:
1. what are interactional online reading strategies used by Iranian postgraduate internal locus of control learners to read an online academic text?
2. How are interactional online reading strategies used by Iranian postgraduate learners with internal locus of control?
3. How do interactional online reading strategies used by internal locus of control learners effect their reading comprehension?
4. To what extent do interactional online reading strategies enhance level of independency of teachers’ presence in Iranian postgraduate internal locus of control learners?

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

With the emphasis of metacognitive reading strategies and independent performance in an online environment, EFL teachers and students are faced with the challenge of developing and implementing new reading strategies to develop their comprehension of reading online texts that can effectively improve students’ independent reading capacity. Especially when online learning system has been introduced into higher levels of education, EFL teachers and students must respond by devising more effective reading strategies and skills. Metacognitive and interactional strategies in an online reading environment might be a good answer.
For online metacognitive reading strategies to be effective, it needs to eventually affect students in some way. Teaching always involves direct teacher/learner communication. Online reading is changing this traditional face-to-face relation and enriching students’ metacognitive reading strategy application by encounters them with various online reading materials and activities. Furthermore, researchers have devoted a great deal of attention to independency (Dickinson, 1995; Ushioda, 2009; Warschauer, 1997; Sakai et al. , 2010), it is only recently that any emphasis has been placed on the study of independency in an online reading setting and the investigation of the relationship between metacognitive reading strategies and independency has been neglected. This study seeks the aspects of online metacognitive reading strategies to have a remedy in reading strategy instructions. More specifically, the study examined the relationships among two broad sets of variables: metacognitive reading strategies, and independency of student to the teacher. The online metacognitive reading strategy used by the students and its effect on their reading comprehension and independency was the focus of the study.

This study was enlightened mainly by metacognitive theory, social constructivism theory, and new literacy theories in reading.

Figure 1.1 theoretical frameworks
The metacognitive theory is attributed to Flavell (1979) and he mentioned a person's ability to control "a wide variety of cognitive enterprises occurs through the actions and interactions among four classes of phenomena: (a) metacognitive knowledge, (b) metacognitive experiences, (c) goals (or tasks), and (d) actions (or strategies)" (p. 906). Nowadays, these terms are used widely in educational psychology to mean ‘thinking about thinking’, or regulation and execution of cognition (Baker & Brown, 1984; Flavell, 1987, 1992; Hacker, 1998). Metacognition in education refers to one's knowledge concerning one's own cognitive processes or anything related to them such as the learning-relevant properties of information or data. Flavell argued about the reasons for learners’ engagement with different learning tasks in different ways; these include knowledge of the person variables, task variables, and strategy variables.
Applied to reading research, metacognition is defined in similar ways. For example, Hacker (2001) has also defined metacognition within Flavell’s model. He identified metacognition as an awareness of oneself who is as “an actor in his environment, that is, a heightened sense of the ego as an active, deliberate storer and retriever of information”. It is whatever “intelligent weaponry the individual has so far developed” is applied to mnemonic problems (Flavell, 1971; Hacker, 2001). This study centered on this aspect and is based on the understanding that (1) strategies are learners’ conscious, active, and self-directed efforts reading for meaning (Cohen, et al., 1996; O’Malley & Chamot, 1990; Schmidt, 1993; Wenden, 1991); and “they are not a single event, but rather a creative sequence of events that learners actively use” (Oxford, 1996); and (2) “reading isn’t merely a passive process of extracting meaning from the text, but rather an active and interactive process in which the reader uses knowledge of the language to predict and create meaning based on the text” (McLeod & McLaughlin, 1986). Since reading is considered the most important skill in academic contexts (Carrell et al., 1988; Grabe, 1991) and reading strategies are crucial for efficient comprehension (Carrell et al., 1988), it is imperative to prepare Iranian postgraduate learners to become independent readers by raising their awareness of metacognitive reading strategies in the hope that such awareness will result in more effective use of these strategies. Metacognitive reading strategies are improved by the student’s active involvement in tasks and the use of the strategy. It is also based on an assumption that metacognition has an important role to play in the reading process; hence, readers who are independent reader have clearer metacognitive awareness of the nature of the reading task and that their own strategies for text processing will differ from those who do not. From this point of view, the possibility of providing highly interactive experiences becomes one of the best-valued features of online reading. This metacognitive perspective considers reading process as an active and meaning-making process through which the learners construct meaning actively as they interact with the texts and their peers.
Social constructivism theory of Vygotsky (1978) is based on social interaction that plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition. Vygotsky’s theory states that knowledge is co-constructed and that individuals learn from one another. It is called a social constructivist theory because in Vygotsky’s opinion the learner must be engaged in the learning process. Lantolf&Thorne (2007) stated that Vygotsky has proposed a wide view of cognition by considering the environment itself as the source of development. In his view, social context is the original source of knowledge. This study mainly focused on online reading environment which would function as a source of knowledge since this environment provides learners an opportunity to engage with each other. This study concentrates on the usage of online reading as a tool to mediate learners’ social environment. Vygotsky believed that the internalization of these tools led to higher thinking skills. These higher thinking skills would happen with the assistance of other people.
“In reading there are a range of tasks that are too difficult for an individual to master alone, but can be mastered with the assistance or guidance of adults or more-skilled peers” (Vygotsky, 1962). The role of the significant other or the more skilled peers is to attempt to find ways of helping the other person to learn. This is one of the fundamental aspect of Vygotsky’s theory which is defined “MKO” referred to the (more knowledgeable other) focused on the connections between people and the sociocultural context in which they act and interact in shared experiences (Crawford et al., 1996). Learners are the central focus in this theoretical perspective as well as their active roles and interactive engagements in the entire reading process. In addition, concept of learner independency is fostered through experience from the sharing in reading. Peer interactions make learners read texts more efficiently and employ reading strategies appropriate to comprehend the reading material. Interactivity reading process refers to the features of learning in collaborative manner that requires individual participation (Johnson, et al., 1994). Collaborative format in reading strategies application provides an opportunity for learners to model and evaluate usefulness of metacognitive strategies as they read (Paris et al., 1991). Successful learning is seen as being dependent on how learners interact with the people around them in order to overcome problems they cannot solve by themselves, so that they can move to the next stage of development that lies in the ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development).
The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) which is defined as “the discrepancy between a child’s actual mental age and the level he reaches in solving problems with assistance” (Paris et al., 1994:187). It should be mentioned that in this study, the enlarged notion of ZPD refers to “an online reading environment that postgraduate learners with reading experience collaborated in understanding a concept or solving a problem”. The “enlarged” notion of ZPD would refer to the participants of all ages and levels - and not just children and adults or novices (Wells, 1999, cited in Villamil& de Guerrero, 2005: 79-80). If the learner can perform a task with some assistance, then he or she is closer to mastering it. This theory is relevant to adolescent development because if students work in pairs, they are interacting with people and therefore can learn different academic ideas from one another. This theory shows that students learn from each other; they can assist one another and co-construct knowledge.
Reading therefore becomes a reciprocal experience for the students. Based on the mutual understanding idea in social interaction of learners, group orientations in reading have been highlighted. Reading is considered as social interaction and collaborative experience (Alexander & Fox, 2004). One way of promoting independent strategic reading is through providing an opportunity for learners to share their reading experiences while reading texts. Since one of the educational goals of research on strategic readers is, to aware the learners about appropriate skills and strategies to read online texts independently. Online reading environment would be one of the suitable environments for readers to function strategically in reading texts. Online reading strategies can be performed as readers’ techniques toward the goal of independent reading.
Independency improves through readers’ interaction to make them become more independent in making meaning in reading materials. Online reading strategies can help learners become more strategic readers thereby making them to manage independent reading process easily in their long reading lifestyles. Independency would be achieved through being aware of metacognitive reading strategy which is considered as a powerful incentive (Day &Bamford, 2002). Independency is giving the learner the right amount of assistance at the right time. This study used online reading environment to provide this opportunity for learners. From this point of view, the possibility of providing highly interactive experiences becomes one of the best-valued features of online reading environment.
New literacy theory Leu et al. (2004) provides further support to the application of online environment to aid reading since it claims that the essence of reading is change. He believes that online reading environment opens new windows to the world and creates a lifetime opportunities. Leu et al. (2004) believes that the more precise definition of this new literacy may never be possible to achieve because of their most important characteristic which can be changed regularly. It implies that reading in new technology needs new literacy to effectively exploit their potentials (Coiro, 2003; Kinzer& Leander, 2003; Lankshear&Knobel, 2003; Leu&Kinzer, 2000; Smolin& Lawless, 2003). Online environment is a new literacy since includes variety of information and it becomes essential to prepare students for these new literacy because they are central to the use of information and reading materials. Leu et al. (2004) assumed that to adopt new literacy, the following principles should be included:

The Internet and other ICTs are central technologies for literacy within a global community in an information age.

New literacy is multiple in natures.
New forms of strategic knowledge are central to new literacy.
Learning is often socially constructed within new literacy.
New literacy change regularly as technology opens new possibilities for communication and information.
As more and more individuals use new technologies to communicate, these linguistic activities shape the ways in which we view and use language and literacy. While it is clear that new literacy is emerging rapidly, students should be able to exploit the extensive ICTs that are available in an online environment. It is essential to prepare students for this new literacy because they are central to the use of information and the acquisition of knowledge. Moreover, this new literacy changes regularly as technology opens new possibilities for communication and information. This could be seen as happening on daily basis as people redefine literacy practices while they communicate on a chat board associated with a website, talk to one another using a video cam, or participate in discussion rooms (Kinzer and Leander, 2003; O'Brien & Bauer, 2005). This characteristic avoids researchers to have more precise definition of this new literacy as the new technologies for information and communication continually appear as newer literacy still emerges.
It is clear that social contexts profoundly shape the changing nature of literacy. It is also true that social contexts influence the changing nature of literacy. Literacy has regularly changed due to social contexts and the technologies they often prompt. Clearly, the social forces in the context exert similar changes. Thus, any attempt to develop a theoretical framework around newly emerging technologies and new literacy must begin by exploring the important social forces. The knowledge of how, when and where to locate the useful information on the internet formed one of the important components of the literacy strategies. This is especially because the availability of information resources and search technologies is rapidly expanding thereby increasing the importance of effective strategies. Therefore, independent readers need to rapidly and clearly communicate their solutions to others as readers can make meaning from the texts through collaboration and communication skills. Thus, effective collaboration among learners would lead them to new online reading strategies to help them in comprehending online texts.
This study turned the above theoretical considerations into an investigation of the interactional reading strategies and its relationship with independency of learners to the teacher.

SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY

Effective online interactional reading strategies are likely help learners comprehend reading texts as well as performing more independently in reading process. Students with an internal locus of control tend to be convinced that their own skill, ability and efforts determine the bulk of their life experiences and they conceptually place the responsibility. Students with an internal locus of control may be more likely to do well in independent reading situations. Learners’ internal locus of control and their independency seems as a key to succeed in an online reading process. Learners should be aware of interactional reading strategies and show their potential and involvement in online reading process. As Iranian university students, independency particularly from the teacher is a goal for these learners as preparation for life-long reading. Also, it is seen as closely related to the qualities and skills needed for the research at postgraduate level of study: self-reliance, resourcefulness, flexibility, critical thinking, and high level of understanding.
The most successful readers are those who are highly independent and develop their online interactional reading strategies. Yet few systematic discussions are found to explore student independency and online interactional reading strategy use in Iranian universities, specifically, the interaction between internal locus of control learners and their independency. There is a need to explore online interactional reading strategies and independency issues and to suggest a critical area of research on their relationship in Iranian online reading platform.
The study of students’ online interactional reading strategy and its effect on their independency capacity in an online platform is important for several reasons. First, it is hoped to give insights into learners’ use of interactional strategies in an online reading platform, an area which has not yet been explored in Iranian context. It is hoped that the findings of this study will contribute to the existing body of knowledge pertaining to interactional strategies in an online reading platform . Second, data analysis of research results may find potential issues regarding the use of online reading system in Iranian universities, in view of the prolific incorporation of online technology in the university level of teaching and learning in Iran. Therefore, it is a worthy endeavor to look into learners’ threaded interactions. It is pertinent that this research is to be undertaken. Third, the study will contribute to the research and literature available about the ways to use the online reading system for Iranian university students. It is hoped that identifying and understanding interactional online reading strategies used by learners with internal locus of control and their strategies function in an online platform will be useful and will enable EFL learners to be empowered to cope with independent strategies demand deemed necessary in the platform . The findings of the study could further add value and knowledge to researchers and educators based on its methodology employed (case study design, observation, triangulation procedures, etc.).
When online reading system penetrates into educational system, users, teachers, and the higher education organizations try to adopt and adapt to new technology in teaching and reading processes. Researches in this case are essential in order to be sure that online reading is able to pave the ways of life-long reading objectives. Few studies conducted in reading strategic area specifically for social science among university learners in Iran. The learners’ extent of perception of online forum would help them enhance their reading comprehension towards their reading goal and activities. Therefore, this study is one of few studies focused on postgraduate learners’ online metacognitive reading strategies.
These online interactional reading strategies would help teachers to understand the importance of proper metacognitive online reading strategies and promote the students’ use of appropriate interactional reading strategies when reading comprehension in an online environment. Furthermore, the findings from this study may help students’ performance in online reading environments. This study also provides the EFL/ESL instructors with enough information about online metacognitive reading strategies to be applied in online academic texts and to help students towards achieving their academic purposes. Knowledge about interactional reading strategies used by students can provide guidelines for instructors to use them in future for novice readers to enhance their reading strategies. The provision of guidelines by instructors and teaching of the reading strategies are some of the sides towards preparing undergraduate learners to be self-directed and also making them to be able to adopt and adapt interactional reading strategies by their own while the other side makes the result of this study to be more important. Since university students are engaged with research in their study, they need to use different online sources. Therefore, they should know the online reading strategies that would help them to be closer to their academic achievements. In addition, learners will be equipped with more knowledge of metacognitive reading strategies programmed and designed by their instructors and teachers to conduct reading activities and course evaluations.
This study shows the usefulness of online forum toward students’ reading strategies. The teachers would be more eager to encourage students’ use of online forum to achieve reading comprehension as well as interactional strategies as an important step towards promoting reading independently. Ultimately, learners have more benefits from this study as a provider of guideline for new approach of teaching and learning.
Most researchers agreed that online reading can be used as a tool for students’ independency development (Little, 1996; Warschauer, 1997). Therefore, the findings of this study would have an effective impact on learners’ independency. It would definitely assist students to reform their reading strategies and independently read online texts for more comprehension for lifelong. This study should help those students who are not confident enough to read online text independently. Students can also benefit from this study by improving their level of independency and internal locus of control when using different online reading strategies to understand the texts better.
The Iranian educational system can benefit from the result of this study as the training and learning expenses were include in the instructors’ or learners’ transport, staff training and some other classroom construction expenses (Moiinvaziri, M., 2010). Therefore, by having online reading platform as well as knowing how to use online reading strategies, it may decrease the education expenses as well as it encourages life-long reading. On the other hand, it may provide readers to have access and learn the texts far beyond the academic purposes and have a new literacy medium with its own features to achieve their purposes. The managers of universities should be aware of benefits of equipping faculties with facilities and updated knowledgeable instructors.

SCOPE AND LIMITATION OF STUDY

This study focuses on investigation of online interactional reading strategies used by Iranian postgraduate students with internal locus of control. Online interactional reading strategies are skills the readers use to comprehend online reading text, and the scope of this study is restricted to the interactional reading strategies used by internal locus of control learners. There are four reading strategies used by readers such as; cognitive strategies, socio-effective strategies, navigational strategies and metacognitive strategies, and this study limited to the metacognitive reading strategies and more specify it to the interactional reading strategies. The choice of this strategy and the evaluation of metacognitive strategy use, instead of any of the other strategies, is a delimitation of this study.
A second limitation is that the study was conducted at only one community college. Therefore, the results can only be generalized to other community colleges serving a similar student population. The text and the platform in which the reading occurs also impact reading and this study focuses on an online reading texts.
Using a combination of data collection techniques has enabled the researcher to explore interactional strategy use in platform and identify which strategies students actually use. The observation and interviews supported the findings from the questionnaire and also added information about how those strategies were employed. Furthermore, the observation and interviews made it possible to reveal findings that were not disclosed in the questionnaire, for example; reference transferring and peer correction in chapter 4. Research that incorporates both qualitative and quantitative data with focusing more on qualitative data does provide more concrete data and a richer understanding of the rationale behind strategy selection and the relationship between strategy instruction and actual use.
However, to enhance the richness and accuracy of data collected via qualitative methods ,as well as to improve efforts at minimizing survey bias and the limitations of self-report instruments, future studies in this area could combine the survey method with think- aloud protocols, and make use of video recording for keener observation of the interactions among participants. This would certainly be a source of clearer evidence to improve the strength of the interfaces made of participants’ use of interactional reading strategies.
This study focused on postgraduate learners with internal locus of control in order to investigate online interactional reading strategies use among this specific group of learners. Although learners with internal locus of control are more motivated in reading, there are other learners with external locus of control. Learners with external locus of control may use different online interactional reading strategies while reading academic texts. Investigating online interactional reading strategies use by other types of learners such as those with external locus of control would provide richer information of learners’ strategy selection and its relationship with learners’ characteristics.
Finally, using different genres of reading passages is another limitation. The reading material used in this study was academic text. Variations in different genres of reading passages may affect reading strategy use while reading texts in English. In this study, only one online academic reading text was used for a reading task for data collection. The online reading texts may have changed at any time, especially the academic text, as it may be written or updated by anyone. Therefore, if online reading texts are used for a study, the texts selected could have different contents and characteristics throughout the entire data collection procedure. Using different online texts with different genres may affect online metacognitive reading strategies students use.

ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY

This chapter presented an overview of the study back ground and Iranian educational system, purpose of the research study, and research questions. Chapter 2 presents a review of the literature on factors influence on reading strategies, theoretical discussions, reading models, reading strategies, locus of control, and previous studies on reading. Chapter 3 outlines, research design, explains the instruments used in this study, the sample of population used in this study, and the way data were analyzed. Chapter 4 represented the data collected in study and the implementation of data and Chapter 5 explains the findings and the result of this study.

DEFINITION OF THE KEY TERMS

The key words that were used in the process of this study were meant to help readers comprehend the text. They include:

Adult Learners

Knowles (2012) defined Adult learners as learners who arrive at the self-concept of being responsible for our own lives of being self-directing. The process of self-concept or self-directedness starts in the early stages and they perform adult roles and they take responsibilities to make decisions by their own. They are capable of autonomous functioning or self-regulation. Adult learners are concerning those who are already participating in educational activities. Many factors must be taken into account such as; their learning motivation, learning nature, and activities they are engaged (Hansman, 2010). This study used postgraduate learners who were aged between 27- 45 years old.

External Locus of Control

External locus of control refers to the learners who attribute success and failure on tasks to external or uncontrollable factors such as luck or task difficulty. It seems that external locus of control orientation is associated with negative personality characteristics (Martin 1978).

Independent Learner

Independent learners are defined by Sue Clegg (2007) as learners capable of planning for their own career and personal futures. These learners are who can self-regulate their learning process.

Interactional Strategies

The term interactional strategy refers to systematic and intentional technique employed by a learner to express his or her meaning when faced with difficulties. Interactional strategy is used to help learners to express themselves effectively and enable them to involve several parties in achieving a common goal, relying heavily on effective communication to make progress in pursuing that goal. Interactional strategies are defined as “the decisions taken by a reader to navigate his reading through the nods of an online text” (Canas et al., 2007, p.3).

Internal Locus of Control

Internal locus of control is the term used for those who attribute success and failure on tasks to personal behaviors and efforts. These learners are intrinsically motivated with positive attitude and high expectations for more success. A person with an internal locus of control believes their rewards in life are guided by their own decisions and efforts (Rotter, 1975).

Locus of control

Locus of control is a significant predictor of success and persistence in distance education course. Rotter (1975) identified the construct of locus of control as “the degree to which an individual believes his reinforcements are dependent on his own behaviors.” Locus of control is categorized into two subcategories such as the internal locus of control and external locus of control.

Metacognitive Reading Strategies

This involves thinking which is referred to as learning process, planning for learning, monitoring of comprehension or production when it is taking place and self-evaluation of learning after the language activity is completed (O'Malley et al. 1985). It is the thinking process of readers that they plan to monitor, evaluate available information and they are measured by Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI) (Mokhtari&Reichard, 2002).

Online interaction

Online interaction is at the heart of the online learning experience. Interaction between and among people via internet. In case of EFL studies these interactions are studies between teacher and students or students with each other (Inoue 2007).

Online Forum

A Web site that provides an online exchange of information between people about a particular topic is called online forum. An online forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. In an online forum messages are at least temporarily archived.

Online text

Online text is a general term for any document that is read in digital form, but especially a document that is mainly text. It is a combination of natural language text with the computer capacity for interactive branching or dynamic display (Weinreich et al. 2001).