Global Structure and Local Features of English Reading Comprehension Texts

Abstract

Abstract A case study: Elneelain University 3'“ year English Language Students This study is conducted mainly to investigate 3'“ year Elneelain University students’ awareness, definition and employment of tl1e functions of global structure and local features in reading comprehension texts. For fulfilling the goals of the study the researcher used three 1nai11 tools: a students’ test after, adequate explicit training, teachers’ questionnaire and open-ended interview for expert teachers of reading comprehension. The aim is to find answers for the research questions. The research rose main four questions about students’ awareness, definition and employment of global and local text structure and a question about how often reading comprehension teachers train students explicitly in classroom settings to employ global and local text functions. The number of students who are the real population is 200, half of them are trained and the other is untrained. The number of teachers who are the real population is 50 and the number of expert teachers is l0. The students’ test reveals that the train students achieved better marks than the untrained ones 95%, which means that trained students get use of text structure training whereas the untrained ones scored 68%. The questionnaire results also reveal that most of the reading comprehension teachers (rarely and never) train students to employ the functions of global and local text structure that only 36% do so. The hypotheses that students are unaware of text structure functions and they can’t define or employ them successfully without training is confirmed by the students’ test results and teachers‘ questionnaire results that: teachers do not always train the students explicitly in classroom situation. The group of expert teachers recommend that: students should be trained explicitly in classroom setting and teachers themselves need adequate explicit training.