The Case Of First Year Students Of English At The ‘higher School Of Education’ Of Constantine (ecole Normale Supérieure De Constantine)

Résumé: The present study aims at investigating the effect of teaching reading strategies to nonmotivated readers on their motivation to read in English. It is based on the hypotheses that some students lack motivation to read in English due to their employment of inadequate reading strategies, and that if they are trained in the use of more effective ones, then this motivation will subsequently increase. A review of the related literature on language learning/ reading strategies, language learning strategy training and motivation to learn languages has been made before proceeding to testing the above hypotheses. To do so, a first questionnaire is administered to all first year students of English at the Teacher Training School of Constantine (80 students) in order to identify the non-motivated ones and the cause(s) of this lack of motivation. Analysis of this questionnaire results has made it possible to identify 28 students who lack motivation to read in English. It has also revealed that this lack of motivation is attributed to their use of ineffective reading strategies, namely the use of bottom up reading strategies that focus on word-to-word comprehension rather than whole text comprehension. Fourteen students have then been selected to constitute a focus group to receive instruction on more effective reading strategies that focus on global text comprehension. These reading strategies have been selected on the basis of the findings of the first questionnaire and the results of the brainstorming with the students that took place on the preparation session of the instruction. The presentation phase of the instruction consists of presentation and practice of the selected strategies. At the end of this instruction, a second questionnaire is administered to these students to determine its success in enhancing their motivation to read in English. This constitutes the third phase of the instruction, i.e. the evaluation. The results of the two questionnaire have made it possible o conform the hypotheses on which the present research work is based.

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