USING THE K-W-L STRATEGY TO BOOST ENGAGEMENT AND COMPREHENSION IN READING LESSONS

INTERNATIONALSCIENCES, EDUCATION AND NEW LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES VOLUME 2 | ISSUE 10 | 2025 https://internationalsciences.org/ | Social Sciences and Humanities | December, 2025 152 DOI: https://10.5281/zenodo.17968151 USING THE K-W-L STRATEGY TO BOOST ENGAGEMENT AND COMPREHENSION IN READING LESSONS Pulatova Maftuna Nodirovna The teacher at Ma’mun University, Khorezm, Uzbekistan E-mail: [email protected] Saitnazarova Ullibibi Nodirovna The teacher at School No.5, Khorezm, Uzbekistan E-mail: [email protected] ABSTRACT This paper explores the challenges students face in reading comprehension and examines the potential of the K-W-L strategy as an effective instructional approach. Drawing on several research studies, the text highlights common reading difficulties such as limited comprehension, unfamiliar vocabulary, and lack of motivation. It then discusses findings from recent literature showing how the K-W-L technique can activate prior knowledge, increase student engagement, promote active participation, and improve overall reading comprehension. The paper reflects on the author’s own classroom experience and considers the practical implications of adopting the K-W-L strategy to enhance reading instruction. Keywords: Reading comprehension, K-W-L strategy, student engagement, EFL learners, motivation, instructional strategies INTRODUCTION Reading is one of the core skills that plays an essential role in developing the English ability of students. It helps students acquire new knowledge from reading a text which can come in various forms such as articles, academic passages, stories, guidebooks, advertisements or even social media posts. Sholeh et al., (2020) also noted that ―the purpose of reading is to achieve an optimal level of understanding of meaning because this activity provides many advantages for someone to get more information after reading‖ (p. 23). However, while reading is one of the most important skills, it is also among the most challenging ones for many learners. According to Yeselson (2000, as cited in Panjaitan & Situmorang, 2018), students face some problems in completing reading tasks and most of them include not being able to INTERNATIONALSCIENCES, EDUCATION AND NEW LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES VOLUME 2 | ISSUE 10 | 2025 https://internationalsciences.org/ | Social Sciences and Humanities | December, 2025 153 comprehend the entire text or some specific sentences, encountering unfamiliar vocabulary and misreading the text in a way that changes the meaning completely (pp. 35-36). My learners also suffer from these problems, for that reason, it has become very challenging for me to engage them in reading tasks. To solve this issue, I started searching for effective approaches and strategies and in the article by Fadila et al., (2024), I found several useful strategies, such as ―interactive reading techniques, vocabulary building exercises, prior knowledge activation, and fluency training‖ (p. 17). However, since I have already implemented most of them in my classroom and, I am now eager to explore a new approach that I have never used before, which is called the K-W-L strategy. METHODS For finding out more about this strategy, I made use of the articles by Nelson & Radema (2018), Agus et al., (2020) and Rifqi et al., (2022) which discovered the use of the K-W-L strategy on improving students’ reading comprehension. Each letter in the acronym stands for a specific step: K refers to what students already know about the topic, W stands for what they want to know and L represents what they have learned after reading. Each scholar has mentioned different viewpoints and benefits of the KW-L technique from which I can get valuable insights to implement it in my teaching process. DISCUSSION According to Sasson (2000, as cited in Nelson & Radema, 2018, ―K-W-L technique can help the teachers to make students more interested in learning to read, because the students will think about what they want to know and what they have learned‖ (p. 36). This idea clearly reflects my current teaching experience, as most of my students usually lack motivation and engagement while doing reading tasks. This is because they do not see a clear purpose for reading, and usually feel stressed and overwhelmed due to complex texts and unfamiliar words in them. By using the K-WL strategy, I can help them activate their prior knowledge and set personal goals before the reading task, making the activity more relevant and meaningful for students. Agus et al., (2020), on the other hand, mentioned another benefit of using the K-W-L strategy. They observed that ―in the teaching and learning activity by using K-W-L strategy as a strategy for teaching learning, all of the students had full participation. For each meeting, they were more enthusiastic and active involvement in the English teaching and learning process conducted by the researchers‖ (p. 30). To be honest, I could not even imagine that it was possible to make students feel truly active and engaged during a reading task. In my experience, whenever I reading topic, students often complained the topic and lessons focused on practicing reading skills mostly resulted in passive participation and boredom of students. I struggled a lot not being INTERNATIONALSCIENCES, EDUCATION AND NEW LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES VOLUME 2 | ISSUE 10 | 2025 https://internationalsciences.org/ | Social Sciences and Humanities | December, 2025 154 able to grab their attention and interest, however, this idea was a real novelty for me and the findings from the research have given hope that it is possible to make a reading task more dynamic and engaging by using the suitable approach. Lastly, Rifqi et al., (2022) conducted research to check the effectiveness of the KW-L strategy on students’ reading comprehension. Their study involved a group of 10th grade students and used pre-test (to measure students’ reading comprehension before applying the K-W-L strategy and post-test (given after the K-W-L strategy was implemented to see if their reading has improved). The results showed that students’ achieved a significant improvement after the implementation of the K-W-L strategy. These findings confirm one more time that the K-W-L approach can be an effective and practical tool to improve students’ reading skills in the classroom, especially when they struggle with understanding and engagement. CONCLUSION In conclusion, exploring the K-W-L strategy through several research articles has deepened my understanding of how this approach should be implemented in the classroom and have provided enough evidence that it is an effective tool for increasing students’ motivation and engagement, encouraging active participation and improving their reading comprehension. REFERENCES: 1. Fadila, L., Dalimunthe, S. A., & Siagian, N. (2024). Strategies to improve English reading comprehension. Fonologi: Jurnal Ilmuan Bahasa dan Sastra Inggris, 2(3), 16– 25. 2. Nelson, N., & Radema, N. (2018). The use of the K-W-L technique in improving students’ reading comprehension. Journal of English Language Teaching and Linguistics, 3(2), 35–43. 3. Rifqi, M. A., Fauziati, E., & Supriyadi, S. (2022). The use of KWL strategy on students’ reading comprehension. Journal of Research on English and Language Learning (J-REaLL), 3(1), 46–52. 4. Sholeh, A., Rosalina, N. E., & Weganofa, R. (2020). The implementation of KWL (Know, Want to Know, and Learned) to improve students’ reading comprehension. IJEE (Indonesian Journal of English Education), 7(1), 22–31. https://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15541