How to help psychology students to become engaged readers of specific literature

Scientific problem statement

Reading professionally oriented texts in a foreign language prepares university students for answering questions and participating in classroom discussions which can be extremely important for their professional activity in the future. However, many non-linguistic students do not like reading, especially for specific purposes. Some of the reasons why university students are not fond of reading are too little attention which is paid to the development of reading culture as well as lack of motivation by ESP teachers who probably can sometimes ignore the importance of their students' engagement in reading. Thus, university teachers should play the crucial role in motivating students to be more engaged readers of professionally focused texts.

Analysis of recent research and publications. With our big intention to engage students of non- linguistic universities/faculties in reading, we are ready to investigate the theoretical foundation of the issue.

The problem of teaching reading and encouraging learners of an English language to read a lot is based on the works in the field of the methodology of teaching reading by N. Anderson, R. Carver, J. Chall, A. Ediger, S. Ford, D. Gardner, W. Grabe, F.K. Morrow, F. Noi, I. Richards, S. Samuels, A. Silva, Straller and others. Scientific researchers that focus on classroom teaching emphasize reading in the classroom and encourage teachers to pay special attention to the ways that reading can strengthen learning in all language skill areas [5; 11]. Scientists also underline the importance of teaching reading comprehension strategies which can be extremely helpful in further involvement of learners into reading actively [7; 15]. Development reading fluency, vocabulary building, text structure and comprehension are defined as important factors that can be considered when teaching reading [13]. Whatever has been investigated by researchers, all of them agree that if teachers want their students to be able to read a lot, they should motivate them to be active readers. Therefore, the problem of the development of engaged readers is in the process of careful consideration.

Pointing out issues requiring further investigation. It is crucial to develop engaged readers especially at the intermediate or upper intermediate levels of language proficiency. Five characteristics define engaged readers and they have already been presented and analyzed [2]. Nowadays they are being considered by teachers of foreign languages who understand the importance of extensive reading. However, many aspects of the practical implementation of these characteristics, as for example, finding special ways of developing engaged readers in the ESP classroom requires further investigation. Non-linguistic university students should do a lot of reading of professionally oriented resources in a foreign language.

The purpose of the article. The article summarizes the experience of application of different ways of forming engaged readers. The objective of the article is to provide a good explanation of why it is so urgent to develop an engaged reader in the ESP classroom and provide grounds for a special set of characteristics of a motivated reader of professional texts defining ways which can be followed by teachers whose aim is to motivate students to love doing professionally focused reading.

Presentation of the main research material

The importance of professionally focused reading is undeniable. Teaching reading in the ESP classroom must help learners to be very engaged readers. All teachers' efforts should be directed not only to teaching reading when doing pre-, during and after reading tasks, but also to help the learners in their reading class understand why they need a lot of reading of professional texts. Perhaps the greatest mistake of ESP teachers is that they expect something different from what should be expected from their students. In our opinion, teachers' attention should be focused on moving their readers from learning to read to reading to learn. Our aim is to clear out what ESP teachers can do to be able to involve their students into extensive reading with the purpose to learn more information about their specialty. We are going to focus our main attention on psychology students who are expected to read a great number of scientific articles on psychology from their textbooks or from online journals and whose reading skills should be well developed. motivation literature engaged reader

With the basic foundation of five characteristics that define engaged readers [3] we can mention that our psychology students should be able to do the following:

1) read widely with different purposes defined by an ESP teacher;

2) read fluently but at the same time focused their attention on the meaning of a professionally oriented text;

3) read and simultaneously develop their comprehension when using the information from professional texts for future tasks;

4) read and be aware of different reading strategies which can be peculiar for professionally focused texts;

5) be motivated readers.

Analyzing the key aspects of mentioned above characteristics, we will be able to discuss their possible implications in the ESP classroom. We will also be able to concentrate our attention on the specific tasks that teachers can use to develop engaged readers when teaching specific English to psychology students.

It is important to emphasize that the development of reading skills should be connected to the other three language skills of listening, speaking and writing. Moreover, reading should be linked with grammar, and vocabulary learning. ESP teachers and their students should be aware of the final aim of professional reading which is comprehension that is checked with special tasks in the after reading stage. To be able to develop language skills as well as reading comprehension we should think about the balance of intensive and extensive reading correspondently. What we are trying to do now is to underline the importance of a balance of intensive and extensive reading instructions. It is worth mentioning that the last one is more than just encouraging students to read a lot of professionally oriented material. We think it is a combination of both reading small chunks of texts with explicit purpose of learning a new skill or new terminology and then reading long professional texts with the purpose of its comprehension and further implication for doing professionally focused activities.

Following our main goal of defining the ways which can be followed by ESP teachers whose aim is to motivate psychology students to love doing professionally focused reading, we should concentrate our attention on each characteristic of an engaged reader.

The recent research suggests that it is significant to draw teachers' attention to reading purposes. Teachers who desire to engage their learners as readers should clearly define goals of reading [8; 9] Thus, firstly, ESP teachers must always encourage psychology students to be ready to explain why they are reading either the paragraph from their textbook or the scientific article from a newspaper or journal. It is possible to do when teachers repeat again and again the question «Why?» during reading instruction. It means that psychology students are asked to read a professional text and to do the tasks but the teacher can interrupt them at any moment asking for explanation why they are reading this.

Secondly, when choosing the materials for reading with a specific purpose, ESP teachers should find level-appropriate texts so that the texts are not difficult and psychology students can cope with them developing required fluency. In our ESP reading classroom we use some reading fluency practices suggested by methodologists [1-4; 14]. The most frequently used is rate build-up reading, when students are asked to read a professional text from the beginning several times and have a possibility to increase the speed of reading which is seen when they mark the last read line with a number. In addition to rate built-up reading our ESP teachers also use shadow reading, repeated reading, and class-paced reading and self-paced readings [1; 3]. They all seem really helpful when the goal is to develop fluency and our psychology students are always involved into these activities pushing themselves to be more fluent readers which definitely provoke them to be engaged readers.

Having discussed the importance of the first two characteristics of engaged readers, let us go to the third which is the most important one. It is reading comprehension. Understanding the purpose of reading and reading fluency do not always mean proper reading comprehension. The last one should be checked by ESP teachers who are expected to build into their planning an explicit reading comprehension activity. However, the research shows that teachers sometimes ignore teaching reading comprehension strategies [15]. In our ESP classroom it is essential for psychology students to get explicit vocabulary instruction since terminology acquisition is a major key to reading comprehension when it goes about professionally oriented texts. Therefore, ESP teachers try to make use of activities suggested by researches. One of the activities our ESP teachers offer to their students is a rapid word- recognition exercise. When preparing to this activity teachers identify 10 terminology words that will appear in a reading professionally focused text and then these terms are recycled five times on the rapid word-recognition activity sheet. Psychology students are given specific time limit and when the activity is finished they circulate among their classmates to find someone who knows terms that they do not know. This rapid word-recognition exercise can be repeated in our class again and psychology students have a chance to compare both first- and second-time achievements finding out if they are more successful at the end. Following this second activity reader's move to the reading passage where they can see the same terms in the context of a professional text. After finishing reading the text psychology students do reading comprehension exercises, when they skim the reading passage and circle their ten terms. We completely agree that the activity described above is a good example of how our ESP teachers can integrate reading comprehension exercises into the lesson with a focus on the rapid word recognition which in its turn can definitely help develop engaged readers.

Further investigation of the problem of professionally oriented reading engagement draws our attention to Kelley & Clausen-Grace's research [12] and therefore, to the fourth characteristic of an engaged reader. They outline a four-phase frame for teaching readers to be aware of their reading strategies. They are designed to help readers make their comprehension visible and include thinking aloud, refining strategy use, self-assessment and goal setting. We tried to investigate the study and to find a possibility to use it in the ESP classroom for psychology students. Thus, our learners are encouraged to predict, make connections, ask questions and summarize. The last one is the most frequently used in our ESP lessons as we are convinced that writing a strong summary is possible only if there is a high level of reader's comprehension. The value of providing summaries is in getting psychology students in professionally focused writing and at the same time in realizing how they are using them. In this case it is really clear for both teachers and students that readers are aware of reading strategies which are also used to produce strong summaries.

The last but not the least characteristic of an engaged reader is motivation. Motivation plays a central role in the development of positive reading habits and attitudes [6]. Motivated readers are more engaged readers. However, motivation is a combination of both teachers' and students' responsibilities [10]. We completely agree with the statement and can say that our ESP teachers find all possible ways to encourage psychology students to read professionally oriented texts when underlying its importance for their professional development, demonstrating or talking about students' own enthusiasm for the professionally focused course material and speaking about their personal experience in professional development while reading articles and books on psychology. When students hear the teacher talks about the excitement of professionally oriented reading and its advantages, it helps them also want to read.

Having commented on all important characteristics of engaged readers as well as describing their importance and special implication in our ESP classroom; we can see two areas that are extremely crucial for the work of ESP teachers who are expected to involve psychology students into extended reading. They are teachers' preparation for reading class and their own understanding of how to get ready to address the needs of learners. Our ESP teachers should be aware of appropriate use of professionally oriented reading materials, development of effective instructional practices when teaching reading and developing love of reading.

Conclusion

Reading is carried out for many purposes. Effective ESP teachers should be able to create a motivating classroom environment in which learners will want to be engaged readers. The future may bring us new ways of reading but the need to read for specific purposes which is extremely helpful in professional development is obvious. In our article we tried to focus attention to psychology students' understanding of the importance of reading to learn. While investigating the issue we tried to describe how to involve ESP students into extensive reading with the purpose of their professional development in the future. Psychology students are expected to read a great number of scientific articles and books on psychology so their reading skills should be well developed which is possible when they are deeply involved into reading. The trend of the future must be effective teacher preparation programs that provide special instructional practices that teachers need to do their job effectively. The area of our future study can be the problem of connection of reading purpose to reading comprehension of professionally oriented texts.

References

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