Browsing by Author "Hussain, Z.D."

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Developing Literacy in Undergraduates of Level One English Proficiency- Application of ‘Reading to Learn’ Methodology
    (Uva Wellassa University of Srilanka, 2011) Hussain, Z.D.
    Note: See the PDF Version The problem of this research concerns a set of students, existent at any Sri Lankan university at any given point in time. They are the students of very weak English proficiency, or of Level I proficiency, according to the English leveling system followed by the universities. This research makes this particular group its focus in view of future English Medium Instruction (EMI) developments that may arise in the Sri Lankan university system. The problem of this study is the underdeveloped English literacy (reading and writing) evident in Level 1 students. The term 'English Literacy' here refers to the ability to read and write in the English Language. When a student opts for English Medium education that undergraduate will be required to complete a considerable amount of reading and writing tasks in order to achieve academic success. Thus the aim of this study is to examine one methodology to address the above mentioned problem with the objective of helping level 1 students develop reading- writing skills in English for academic success. It is common knowledge that university education requires a high degree of reading and writing. As Chen and Donin (1997) pointed out 'Reading constitutes a major part of schooling, especially at the university level. ' and they add that 'By reading the texts, students are expected to either develop or to review concepts on their own.' The development of concepts and the reviewing to a considerable extent is presented through the written work of the students. In his description on the standard of literacy in higher education Rose says a student at this level should be able to 'read complex academic texts with a high level of understanding' and 'use academic conventions and objective academic language to demonstrate their mastery of a topic or inform and influence their reader.' Thus if students are unable to meet the reading and writing demands of higher education, they will be at a clear disadvantage in meeting the demands of English medium tertiary education. In fact the primary goal of the methodology which this research followed is 'to provide access to tertiary study...' (Rose et al., 2003). The past research that is the Systematic Functional Linguistics based 'Reading to Learn' methodology, on which this study is modeled was implemented mostly with students having a literacy disadvantage which hindered their being successful in their respective educational programs. All these studies claim to have successfully achieved or considerably neared their goals of enabling such students to read and write texts which would have been considered impossible tasks from the stand point of the students' level of language proficiency. The English literacy disadvantage in the Sri Lankan undergraduates who belong to the lowest rung in English proficiency and the encouraging results produced by the past studies on the implementation of the 'Reading to Learn' methodology based on Systematic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to develop English literacy in its subjects prompted me to research on the effects of this methodology on the students studying in my level 1 English language class in the University of Colombo.