Forouzandeh Soltani
Mahboubeh Taghizadeh

The purpose of this study was to identify English language teachers' strategy use, perceptions, and difficulties to prepare talented students for the reading section of the Iranian university entrance exam. The participants were 11 EFL teachers teaching in pre-university centers for talented students in Borujen, Iran. The instrument was a semi-structured interview with five questions. The results revealed that instructors had positive attitudes towards teaching reading and emphasized optimal use of reading strategies and arousing interest and motivation to enhance pre-university talented students' reading comprehension. The results also showed that instructors used techniques of communicative approach and various types of supplementary texts for teaching reading comprehension to these students. The most frequent strategies used were found to be identifying main ideas, understanding the references, answering detailed questions, guessing meaning of unknown words from contexts, and enhancing students’ tolerance of ambiguity. Lack of concentration, paying less attention to English course compared to specialized courses, and lack of interest and motivation were the challenges of teachers of talented students.

attitudes, gifted students, EFL teacher, reading difficulty, reading strategy use