Reading Competence of the Saudi EFL Learner: Empowering the Teachers through Linguistics

Fahad Saleh Suleiman Alfallaj

Abstract


The trend in the Reading class in KSA has been what is called ‘Standards Based Proficiency’ as opposed to the more desirable ‘Real World Reading Requirements’. This is also where the greatest gap occurs. Whereas white collar jobs may require more reading, blue collar jobs may invariably involve reading of technical manuals and scripts where a single error can lead to disastrous results. Reading is a skill that is very much related to the real life language use by FL learners. Can this gap be closed in our educational institutions? The answer is yes as concluded by the current study that evaluates the role of Linguistics in empowering the teachers of EFL to successfully tackle the reading failure of the KSA EFL learners. Our results show that with basic training in the field teachers can bring about much change in the reading proficiency of the learners.


Keywords


Reading, Proficiency, Real life use, Linguistics, Morphology, Semantics, Syntax, Semiotics, Lexis

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.8n.3p.12

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