Implications for teaching specialized text reading

Abstract

University reading material, apart from its content-area focus, yields significant language input. By assigning a variety of materials to read, students are provided considerable opportunities to assimilate target community language peculiarities and discourse conventions, as they occur in authentic contexts. Our legitimate concern is that the opportunities could be taken advantage of only when students master a good reading competence (RC), correlated with other basic language skills. To begin with, the article examines the importance of RC development for further academic and professional performance of students, in general, and for the acquisition of language proficiency within the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course, in particular. Second, integrated approach instruction is provided from two perspectives: as a means of boosting students’ receptive and productive skills development and as a way of motivating students to get meaningfully engaged with specialized texts to get deeper domain-related knowledge. Thirdly, it is considered the issue of selecting the specialized text - a sample of disciplinary conventions written by domain experts. Finally, there are suggested some recommendations concerning students’ reading competence development within integrated pedagogy.

Keywords

• esp
• content-based reading
• integrated communication skills
• integrated skill approach
• reading-to-learn
• specialized text