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Researching Bangladeshi pupils' strategies for learning to read in (UK) primary school settings

Language learning strategy research has focused on the actions of the individual language learner and investigated the links between successful learning and the strategies that such learners use. At the same time, researchers studying beginner bilingual pupils learning English and learning to read in English in UK schools have also been interested in the strategies that such pupils employ in order to be successful learners and readers in their new language. This article reports on some of the findings from a study of the experiences of a small group of bilingual Bangladeshi pupils that took as its initial focus the strategies that the pupils called on in order to engage with learning to read in English (their L2) in their classroom. What emerged during the course of the study was that the strategies the pupils were employing could not be considered separately from the contexts in which the children were learning, and that the strategies children used were not simply strategies for learning to read or to learn English but were bound up with issues of identity and assimilation. The data thus challenge research that focuses exclusively on the individual learner or that treats context as simply another variable. The paper argues for a sociocultural approach to research and pedagogy in relation to language learning and for the use of ethnographic methods.