2.2. Improving reading comprehension skills of learners in teaching English for specific purpose Nowadays, many foreign and second language learners studying at different technical institutions learn English not only for general purposes but for more specific uses. Students learn English for academic purposes and their academic study will usually involve specialized areas across different disciplines in physical sciences as well as in social sciences. Teachers come across with different problems in teaching ESP (English for specific purposes), one of them is reading comprehension of the learners they teach. Most scholars would agree that reading is one of the most important skills for educational and professional success. In highlighting the importance of reading comprehension Doff stated that “reading is the most important activity in any language class, not only as a source of information and a pleasurable activity, but also as a means of consolidating and extending one’s which are knowledge of the language”13 Reading reinforces the learner’s other language skills and all reading 110 activities serve to facilitate communication fluency in each of the other language skills. In a university setting where the medium of instruction and communication is not English, but where students are required to read textbooks in English, there is a need for reading comprehension courses in English for specific purposes (ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES). The texts assigned in academic content-courses require a high level of linguistic proficiency and presuppose extensive background knowledge.
Stevens argued that this compounded problem is particularly acute in the first year of undergraduate programs, since students are not familiar with the academic jargon and conceptual issues of their rEnglish for specific purposesective field.14 When designing a reading course, it is extremely important to strike a balance between content and language. Questions asked about the content must vary in their cognitive level to allow for intellectual involvement on the part of the student.
Nation states that English for specific purposes academic reading courses should emphasize both reading to learn (activities that stress comprehension of subject matter content) and learning by doing (activities that call for utilization of the ideas in the text). The former deals with the text at hand, exclusively the latter takes the learner beyond the text and into some kind of reformulation of the facts, information and concepts found in it, for example in reading to learn, emphasis is given to close reading of texts, often paragraph by paragraph, in order to find the function which each paragraph fulfils in the passage 15 Reading to learn also involves complex thinking skills in which students must be able to make the material their own through activities which guide them into analyzing texts, such as summarizing passages and chapters, finding comparison and contrast or cause and effect examples, following an argument in the text. Many of the reading -to- learn activities lend themselves to thematic or topic-centered reading in which a set of material is composed of a variety of passages, all with common subject area focus. By reading in depth around a particular subject area, students experience marked growth in background knowledge. Learning by doing activities help students extract meaning from texts by using note-taking skills, following directions. Solving problems set up in the text and similar methods. By manipulating the data, learners gain more experience with the language as well as with the underlying organizational systems presented in the material. The selection of esp reading texts can rely on the following criteria:
Most terms incorporated in such texts are the specialized terms that are vital to the comprehension of each text. This means that such texts involve various word formations that contribute a lot to the mastery of vocabulary in the specialty concerned.
The texts relate to student's background through which they can create more ideas and some novelty ones. In this regard, stipulates that if students have a difficult subject from the specialization concerned they will find themselves tangled in complicated terminology and difficult concepts that they cannot understand.
While simple statement patterns dominate most of the texts, other sentence structures can be adopted. If other complicated structured are used, students may face difficulties in selfexpression and comprehension of the given texts.
The texts should be devoid of any form of complexity and difficulty with meaning, vocabulary, structures ideas, styles, etc. As to the ideas chosen, they should be formulated in a simple, clear, interesting and stimulating way.
Otherwise, student's reluctance to provide ideas may arise occasionally. Concerning the kind of English For Specific Purposes texts, expository and argumentative texts are the most desirable since they can stimulate in students the diversion of thoughts that make them create some novelty ones. However, factual texts such as narrative and descriptive ones are so easy for students to express and comprehend.
The balance which has to be maintained between the linguistic and the conceptual level of students is perhaps more evident in ESP programmer than general English.
In addition to all the criteria above, careful instruction in the significance and value of using English as a means of improving knowledge, skills and attitudes related to a particular specialization should be provided for the students. The English language provides ESP students with the most up-to-date scientific and advanced knowledge concerning their specialty. Any lack of such convincement may adversely influence their performance in the foreign language. In conclusion, students should be exposed to a variety of strategies that are suitable for learning the unknown words they encounter in reading different academic texts. The most important step in helping students to use different strategies which would lead to success is organizing strategy training sessions with students in every class so that our students can learn words more effectively.
