Abstract:

Reading is an essential skill for Second/Foreign language learners to master English language, and as it is our belief that with enhanced reading skills, EFL/ESL students will reach a greater development not only in English language, but also in other scientific academic majors as well. From this standpoint, we conducted a close analysis of students’ English reading comprehension exam results in order to assess students’ English linguistic competence. This analysis has revealed students’ low reading competence and tremendous difficulties in mastering this important skill. A need was felt then by English and IT instructors to work collaboratively using both linguistic teaching strategies / approaches and IT expertise available to help students master this important macro-skill. In this paper, using Mobile Learning is regarded only as a springboard or rather a framework to teach students reading strategies /approaches and sub-skills to improve the overall written discourse comprehension. To reach this end, a needs analysis was carried out by means of a questionnaire to pinpoint as closely as possible the students’ needs for mastering reading sub-skills, along with the identification of their shortcomings in grasping grammar rules (both use and usage), carrying out an appraisal of their lexicon in order to provide means to expand it if need be, conducting an assessment of the rhetorical /textual difficulties and finally envisaging miscellaneous strategies to overcome them all. Furthermore, other strategies will be put forth to improve students’ English reading competence by activating their prior knowledge (schemata), and equipping them with reading skills using top-down and bottom-up approaches in order to increase their reading rate/comprehension and finally expanding their lexicon using different means. In the second phase of our study, we will discuss students’ use of the Mobile Apps inside and outside of class in order to make a significant reading improvement.

Keywords:

Mobile Learning, Schemata, Top-Down and Bottom-Up Reading Approaches, Synonymy, Antonymy, Polysemy, Collocation, Endophoric, Exophoric, Anaphoric and Cataphoric.