Abstract:

The English language – a lingua franca of the scientific world – will be used by many technical or other non-philological university graduates in their future professional careers when reading specific texts. To improve their reading skills, the author brings some practical advice based on the results of her research carried out at three Slovak non-philological universities. The research was divided into two parts, first part aimed at finding the level of the students' reading skills, while the other one focused on measuring their performance in reading skills after a short practical training. The research proved that a significant improvement of reading skills is possible in a short period of time and after targeted training. The process of developing and improving the university students' reading skills comprised the explanation and training of reading techniques and strategies, work with various genres, and how to deal with unknown vocabulary. In the contribution, the author – an experienced English for Specific Purposes practitioner – mention the most important parts of her research while giving also some practical advice for how to develop and significantly improve the student's competence in reading subject-specific texts.

Keywords:

University students, reading skills, specific texts, reading techniques, linguistic knowledge.