Abstract

In the Nigerian classrooms, teachers focus much attention on the linguistic aspects of the text neglecting the other aspects such as readers and background knowledge in teaching reading comprehension. Therefore, this paper discusses the sociocultural views on reading comprehension and reports students’ views of a Problem-based learning approach (PBL) on their reading comprehension. Second-year 18 ESL undergraduates were involved in the study for a period of 12 weeks. Semi-structured interviews were used to elicit the participants’ views on the use of PBL in reading comprehension. The findings revealed that PBL has a positive impact on participants’ reading comprehension. It increased their interests and engagement with texts during reading. The study provides some implications for teaching reading comprehension in the sociocultural context and encourages further research to investigate the effectiveness of instructional approaches that incorporate the sociocultural perspectives on reading comprehension.