Improving students’ academic communicative proficiency through reading techniques and authentic materials

Abstract

The present study attempts to explore the underlying reasons that prevent first year EFL students at Mohamed Kheider University of Biskra (MKUB) during the academic year: 2014/2015 from positively interacting with the reading print to which they are intensively exposed to in most of their lectures. The hypotheses put forward throughout the current research are expressed as follows: If first year EFL students are totally aware of the importance of the reading skill and succeed in using the appropriate reading techniques and strategies, they may understand the assigned reading materials. This difficulty is due to the absence of the students’ awareness of the importance of the reading skill and their failure to use the appropriate reading strategies and techniques to understand them. Also, students’ communicative proficiency may increase through the implementation of authentic materials accompanied with the use of these reading strategies and techniques. In this study the exploratory method was opted in order to explore the importance of the reading skill and the extent to which the effectiveness of its implementation with authentic materials and teaching the appropriate reading strategies and techniques may enhance EFL students’ academic communicative proficiency. The findings obtained from the analysis of the questionnaire administered to 80 (N: 80) first year EFL learners have, on the one hand, revealed that they are conscious (but not aware) of the importance of the reading skill, and they totally ignore most of the reading strategies and techniques when approaching any reading material. On the other hand, those students have shown more enthusiasm and motivation towards the use of authentic materials in their classes. According to the results obtained from 16 (N: 16) EFL teachers’ questionnaire, most of them have developed a positive attitude towards the use of these materials in their EFL classes. Concerning the use of reading strategies and techniques, only a small minority of those teachers stated that they, from time to time, remind their students about some of these strategies. Finally, to enhance first year EFL students’ academic communicative proficiency, a need for incorporating the reading skill in their curriculum and implementing authentic materials accompanied with the teaching/learning of the necessary reading strategies and techniques have become compulsory in order to avoid some undesirable and unsatisfactory outcomes of many Algerian EFL learners.