Individualized Reading for EAP for social science first year student in Addis Ababa University: a study of a possible Approach for teaching Reading in EFL.
No Thumbnail Available
Date
1993
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The three-semester service English courses offered by the Department of Foreign
Languages and Literature, Institute of Language Studies, are meant to help all Addis
Ababa University students develop their linguistic abilities so that they could successfully
cope with the academic requirements of the university. The first two courses are offered
in the first year and the third course in the first or second semester of the second year.
Research indicates the first year courses in particular have not succeeded in helping the
social science students develop their background knowledge to a significant degree to read
in English for academic purposes.Based on the current view that reading is an interactive process and that this may be
facilitated if learners can develop the critical mass of knowledge which embodies
knowledge of the content (or of the world), knowledge of the reading process and
knowledge of English and the capacity to effectively use this competence, the current
study explores the feasibility of a possible approach for reading instruction in English for
academic purposes to enable students to acquire the essential mass of knowledge so that
they could become fluent readers in English. The approach maintains that effective
learning for attain ing the essential background knowledge for developing the learner's
ability to read fluently can occur when learning is individualised (to cater for learner
differences in cognitive style and strategies, learning strategies, moti vation and purpose
of learning , and prior knowledge) and when learners get the training on learning how to
learn and to take the responsibility for their learning.Accordingly, an independent learning mode was designed in order to encourage learners
to take most of the learning decisions by themselves: two sessions per week of
individualised reading whereby learners selected appropriate reading materials from the
ELSIP and SRA collections and were encouraged to read and focus on what each
individual learner felt was his/her needs , lacks and wants; and one session per week of
group discussion whereby learners shared experiences and discussed the structure and
usage exercises in the Freshman English course books and were provided with some training on learning how to learn. The study was undertaken in two phases: the pilot
planned to last for a semester and the corpus for two semesters. While the pilot study
involved about 120 social science first year students (or four sections: two sections were
study and two sections were control), the main study incl uded about 420 social science
first year students (or thirteen sections: six sections consisting of 210 students assigned
to the study group, and the remaining 210 students assigned to the control group). The
mode of study continued for one semester, or about five months . At the beginning and
end of the study, a test package and a questionnaire on the reading process and reading
strategies were administered. The test package consisted of reading comprehension tests
drawn from the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate, First Certificate
in English (to assess the reading comprehension improvement of the study group), cloze
readability tests set from the social science first year course books (to test whether
students at the end of the study, due to the approach variable, have found their course
books easier to read than before), and English language tests taken from the Freshman
English lOlA and Freshman English 10lB examinations (to find out whether students in
the study groups have improved in their linguistic ability). At the end of the study, the
attitudes and opinions of the instructors involved were also solicited.
Despite the planned arrangement, unforseen circumstances limited the corpus study to one
semester. Consequently, the pilot study was found to be essential for two fundamental
reasons: firstly , the corpus study was limited to only a semester and, thus, this
necessitated the use of the information compiled from the pilot study to validate the test
results of the corpus study; and secondly, the pilot study indicated that most students
preferred structured learning materials like the SRA reading cards to unstructured ones,
such as the ELSIP materials, at the initial stages. Based on this, the corpus study started
with the SRA and would have moved into the ELSIP if the study had not been
discontinued at the beginning of the second semester of the 1990/91 academic year.
It was found out that the students during the pilot study and the main study appreciated
the mode of learning and they liked the materials they used. They reported that they had
benefitted substantially and the approach pursued helped them not only in studying
English but also their other courses. The instructors corroborated the students' reactionsand recommended the adoption of this approach in the service English courses.
However, during the pilot study, the results of the tests did not indicate any marked
improvement in the reading abi lity of the students in the study group. During the main
study, the cloze test results were inconclusive. The study group of the main study,
however, performed significantly better than the control group in the reading
comprehension post test. They also indicated a marked improvement in their reading
comprehension ability at the end of the study. Moreover, it was statistically proved that
the study group improved significantly in their linguistic ability at the end of the study ,
however, it was not possible to conclude whether they did better than the control group.
Significant changes in reading habits and styles were not observed. However, it was
found out that the study group performed significantly better than the control group in
the 1990/91 academic year first semester Freshman English lOlA final examination.
It was recommended that such explicit changes could have been found to be more marked
than indicated by the test results (a) if the study had continued for more than a semester,
and (b) if the study had given more prominence to assessing the process than the product
of language learning.