Genre-Based Reading Skills

1. Introduction Nowadays Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) plays a significant role in many countries around the world. Teaching a language is a complicated process since every language consists of four main skills, including reading, writing, speaking and listening, and some sub-skills, including grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary. One essential skill is reading, and it has always been taken into account as one of the most influential skills which is now even more important than before due to the large amount of information in every specific area of study. By knowing the importance of reading, a question may arise: How can teachers improve the language learners’ reading skill? To answer this question, a research study

In other words, language learners need to construct meaning while reading a text, and having adequate knowledge regarding the genre of the text can facilitate this process. It works as ‘textual schemata’, and it limits the ‘meaning-potential’ of a specific text (O’Sullivan, et al, 1994). In other words, having knowledge about genre is likely to play a significant role in enhancing the reading comprehension. Fowler (1989) has pointed out that “Readers learn genres gradually, usually through unconscious familiarization.” (p. 215) Thus, teachers can employ this technique to improve the learners’ reading comprehension. Timed reading is an activity which is usually done to increase reading speed (Nation, 2007). Timed reading activity involves reading of passages with equal length and equal word difficulty.

This type of activity is usually done over a period of weeks or months with the purpose of reading speed. It is likely that the growth of reading speed can affect the level of reading comprehension. Thus, this study tries to discover whether genre-based reading or timed activity reading is more beneficial for the language learners’ reading comprehension

3. Literature review Learning to read in a foreign language is surely a demanding task. “It implies interaction between the reader and the text, a degree of knowledge of the world and determined topics, some knowledge of the target language and also the interpretation of the writer’s message which can vary from reader to reader.” (Fuenzalida, 2010, p. 4) “In the reading process, the reader is an active participant, constructing meaning from clues found in printed text.” (Shafiei Ebrahimi, 2012, p. 195) In other words, the active role of the reader constructs the meaning from the text. In the history of research, it has been agreed that reading is a very complex process that involves different factors which interact with one another. When it comes to EFL students, the difficulty of reading becomes even more complicated. The readers must be aware of the implicit and explicit data that is being transferred. In fact, being able to read competently is one of the most important skills that we need to have in today's world.

3.1. Genre-based