Finding out about learners' approaches to written French through the development of a strategies questionnaire

In this article I describe how a survey instrument was constructed to elicit from Year 7 learners their strategies for reading in French as a foreign language. The rationale for this project entails a brief review of the status of foreign language reading in England since the advent of the GCSE and the National Curriculum for Modern Foreign Languages. The procedures undertaken to develop a strategies questionnaire are described in some detail, beginning with exploratory interviews with Year 7 pupils (aged 11) who had a wide range of achievement levels in French. The results of the interviews provided the scenarios, the items and the wording for the questionnaire, which was piloted and then administered across entire Year 7 year groups. It has proved effective for both researchers and teachers to identify and deal with learners' approaches to handling written French. Successful and less-successful strategies are included on the questionnaire along with 11-year-olds' own descriptions of psycholinguistic processes when they are reading French words.