Published by TESOL Arabia in 2014, "Teaching, Learning and Researching Reading in EFL" has produced a number of well-researched papers on reading, many of which were produced in the Arab world. The images here show the cover and the contents pages.Here is the introduction, written by myself and my co-editor Helen Emery, for the volume to give a flavour of what is included, and an indication of some of the significant insights the book provides.
This volume presents the reader with a
thorough discussion of a wide range of issues all related to the teaching of
reading in contexts where English is taught as a foreign or second language.
The majority of papers present original research while others provide an
overview of key topics. While the majority of contexts are located in the
Arab-speaking world, a good proportion of other countries and contexts are also
presented. This introduction aims to provide the reader with a general guide to
the papers and attempts to highlight some of the key themes and significant
contributions.
The papers in section one focus on the
language learner as a reader. The approach taken by Helen Donaghue and Jason
Thompson in the first paper is to elicit from students what they do to practice
and improve their reading skills, as part of an evaluation into the innovative
reading programme implemented in a college of higher education in the U.A.E. As
interesting as the results is Donaghue and Thompson's assertion that by taking
the time to listen to our students and respond more directly to their needs,
preferences and practices, we can significantly improve the way we teach
reading. Tariq Alkhaleefah and Nilüfer Demirkan-Jones look at how the type of
text affects the use of reading strategies by university undergraduates in
Saudi Arabia through a carefully controlled study. In doing so, they construct
an impressive range of reading strategies that will be of great value to
students, teachers and researchers alike. Victoria Tuzlukova, Fawzia Al-Seyabi, Ahlam Al-Rawahi and Abeer Al-Owasi
also investigate the reading strategies of their students in an Omani
university foundation programme, as well as their attitudes towards reading,
and are consequently able to offer clear directions for syllabus planners. In
the final paper in this section, Sasan Baleghizadeh and Mohammad Dehghan use
two instruments to investigate the issue of reading anxiety in university
students in Iran. Both instruments help to reveal the importance of reading
anxiety and how it can significantly impact students' reading performance
through their selection of reading strategy.
The papers in section two take the
classroom as the focus of research and investigation. In the case of Helen
Emery and Halima A'Thehli this involves investigating students' attitudes
twoards the reading component of the Omani national curriculum and resulting
issues connected to the teaching of reading using the course book English For
Me. Their survey of teachers' attitudes, beliefs and practices highlights the
central role that appropriate reading materials take in producing a successful
reading programme. In an innovative study, Marwa Hegazy and Muhammad Abdelatif
show how the practice of repeated reading in Egyptian prep schools can make a
significant difference to students' ability to read fluently. Selma Deneme's
paper reports on a research project that compared students' experiences of
learning how to write summaries in universities in Jordan, Spain and Turkey.
Across all three countries, it is evident that students recognise that they do
not receive enough training in how to read for summary-writing or in how to
prepare summaries. Based on a project in Indonesia, Handoyo Puji Widodo
provides suggestions on how to plan and prepare materials for Vocational
Education using a social semiotic approach. The next two papers, by Melanie
Gobert and by Salma Al-Humaidi and Abdullah A'Riyami, both look into the use of
graded readers in U.A.E. and Oman, respectively. While Gobert's study indicates
significant gains made by students who were provided with relevant titles, the
study in Oman offers interpretations as to why the graded reading materials
offered by the Ministry of Education did not make a lot of difference to
student progress or motivation. The final two papers in this section examine
the assessment of reading. The very practical paper by Beth Wiens, Christine
Coombe and Peter Davidson offers step-by-step guidance on how to prepare a
reading test. In the final paper in section two, Nick Moore, Gillian Knight and
Claudia Kiburz describe an assessment tool for reading that, despite the many
changes that they describe, continues to develop a wide range of reading
habits, particularly for students that start below the required standard of
reading to gain entry into undergraduate studies in a U.A.E. university.
The aim of the final section is to take
the attention of our readers to issues related to reading that are situated
outside the classroom walls. The topic of leisure reading in both English and
Arabic is investigated in a study by Melanie van den Hoven, Gillian Westera and
Samia El Bassiouny that uses multiple perspectives to seriously challenge the
notion that young Arab students are not readers. The data they gathered on the
reading habits and attitudes of trainee teachers at a college in the U.A.E.
reveals a complex picture of biliteracy that enables effective action to be
taken. In a second study that looks into reading habits in both English and
Arabic, Josephine O’Brien and Jill Cook examine in detail the reading abilities
of their students in both languages to discover that there are, in fact,
significant similarities across languages. That is, their Emirati students'
reading strategies show considerable consistency across English and Arabic
reading tests. In the next paper, Amanda Howard provides a detailed overview of
research into reading from across the Middle East. The survey highlights that
common themes in research into reading include discourse analysis, vocabulary
and the use of the first language. The innovative programme Reading to Learn
is described by Claire Acevedo in the next paper. The paper focuses on the
repeated success that the programme has had in closing the performance gap
between the stronger and weaker readers, detailing the results in Sweden where
a large proportion of the previously-underperforming students were foreign
language learners. The final paper in this collection questions the traditional
notion of literacy. In describing some recent research into multiliteracies, Guy
Merchant provides a valuable framework to interpret the role of different
technologies in the teaching and learning of literacy in its more traditional
guise and in other modes of meaning-making enabled by easy access to digital tools.
The majority of papers in this volume
address the relatively un-researched notion that students in the Arab world do
not appear to be good readers, especially by the time that they reach tertiary
education. What all of the papers also show, however, is that there are many
approaches to understanding this notion, to challenging the attitude that Arab
students can not or do not read, and that for students that are struggling with
reading in English, there are many solutions to guide them towards fluent
reading. It is the hope of the editors and contributors to this book that, through
the papers presented here, teachers and students will discover ways to bring
more success in reading to all EFL learners.The book should soon be made available to order online from TESOL Arabia publications. There are also plans to make the book available online, but these are likely to take some time.
