Reading strategy instruction (RSI) has been extensively studied with the aim of promoting transfer within and across languages. This study also reports the results of a quasiexperimental study aiming to investigate the effects of RSI in L2 on the overall and componential reading performance in L2 and L3 as the two foreign languages. The population of this study comes from 60 male pre-university students majoring in Mathematics and the sample chosen involved 36 students with low motivation to read in L2 and L3. They were randomly assigned to an experimental (N=18) and a control (N=18) group; the experimental group received RSI in L2 while the control group took their traditional reading instruction and only participated in pre- and posttest stage. In order to collect the relevant data, a researcher-developed 30-item reading comprehension test in L2 and L3 was used as pre- and posttest measures of reading performance. The scores of both groups were compared at the end of instruction period. The results of ANCOVA, Ttest, and MANCOVA analyses of the measures suggested that while RSI in L2 had a significant effect on the overall L2 and L3 reading performance, such effects were more in L2 than L3 and the componential analysis of the reading comprehension tests also confirmed this finding. The implications of the results are therefore discussed in the light of Cummins' (1979, 1980, 2016) Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis and Cook's (1992) Multi-competence Model.
