Students encounter challenges in the bid to tackle unfamiliar words, develop their vocabulary and generally extract meaning from reading comprehension. This work therefore, assessed the strategies that
SS2 Igbo students, learning English as a second language, employed in order to understand and answer reading comprehension questions correctly. The theoretical framework applied is the Schema theory. Three schools selected from the three Local Government Areas (LGA) in Umuahia, respectively, were used for the study. Data were collected from a sample size of 113 respondents, using the questionnaire instrument and a written comprehension text which required the respondents to indicate how they got
answers to the comprehension questions. The essence was to examine the strategies the respondents employed in answering the questions. The data were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. The findings revealed that students check unfamiliar words in dictionaries and deduce meaning from contexts, among
others. Some respondents who disagreed with the strategies may not be conversant with them. This calls for comprehension strategy instructions to enlighten students. The paper finally recommends local content comprehension passages for students, since they are not familiar with foreign concepts and events.
Ugo-Ochulo, Ngozi Ijeoma