Approach and Design: A Method Analysis of Efl Reading Comprehension Instruction

Abstract

There is an ongoing phenomenon among non-English speaking students, particularly at the university level who struggle with reading in English in content areas. One way to alleviate reading problems in English language among non-native speaking students is by ensuring that the English language reading curriculum is coherent at all levels. The purpose of the present study was to explore the type of (EFL) reading comprehension instruction reflected in the Malaysian English language reading curriculum at the levels of Approach and Design, and its alignment with the communicative label. The data for the study were collected from two main curriculum documents, which were the Form Five English Language Curriculum Specifications document and the Form Five English language textbook. A document review was conducted in order to obtain the data, which were in the form of reading tasks elicited from the selected curriculum documents. Manifest content analysis was used to analyze the data. The findings show that non-communicative whole Language instructional approach was the most prominent type of second language acquisition (SLA) instructional approach while for the second language reading instructional approach, the non-interactive reading instructional approach was highly reflected with teacher role primarily inferred as a director. The findings suggest that the instructional approaches reflected in the Malaysian secondary English language reading curriculum is not in alignment with the communicative grounding as an approach to instruction.