Dr. Sedigheh Vahdat, Dr. Zohre G. Shooshtari & Abbas Cheldawi
Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Iran
Reading skill is regarded as a means of effective communication in first, second and foreign language learning context. EFL learners reading ability requires a sufficient knowledge of vocabulary, ability in scanning and skimming and prediction of meaning of the text. This study was carried out to identify the reading problems of Iranian Arab high school students in their English course from the teachers’ perspective. A questionnaire of 23 items in three categories was given to 40 Iranian EFL teachers of Dasht-E-Azadegn (located in Khuzestan Province of Iran) high schools. Also, two interviews were conducted with 10 of English teachers and 11 students respectively. The collected data was analyzed through SPSS. After computing the percentage and frequency of the three main categories, the findings indicated that the respondents were of the opinion that Iranian Arab high school students encountered problems in vocabulary, scanning and skimming and prediction of text meaning. The teachers also believed that the assigned English course books and the devoted time for teaching them play significant role in creating the mentioned reading problems. The students related the problems to their “weak base”, insufficient dictation practice and little knowledge about reading strategies. The results of this study can be useful for EFL teachers in improving their lesson plans for EFL reading instruction. Also the findings can be helpful as a means for exploring the role of high school English books in the reading problems.
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The Second International Conference on Current Issues of Languages, Dialects and Linguistics (WWW.TLLL.IR), 1-2 February 2018, Ahwaz.
