Analyzing texts in efl reading classes: a qualitative research with undergraduate material (original) (raw)

Abstract

Dedico este trabalho a meus pais,Udo e Ilse, assim como também à minha tia Nilva, pelo apoio, auxílio e compreensão em todos os momentos. Agradeço também ao CNPQ pelo apoio financeiro. Dedico igualmente à minha orientadora Lêda por seus ensinamentos, motivação e paciência sempre presentes. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are many people that we usually think about when we carry out a research and decide to live in a different city, far from home and distant from our loved ones. While I was away from all the things that I liked, I could always count on several people who helped me to go through all the difficulties of developing mind and spirit in a new place. For all this and for all the situations I had the chance to live with this great opportunity, I would like to thank my aunt, Nilva, for all the support, home and love she gave to me whenever I needed. I would like to thank professor Celia from FURB, who listened to me and stimulated me to never give up. I cannot forget to mention and thank my parents, Udo and Ilse, for understanding my difficulties and my absence, as well as Daniel, my dear boyfriend, who was always by my side, even when we were not near. I would also like to thank CNPQ for financial support and professor Lêda who brought me here and made me a huge part of what I am today.

Figures (46)

Graph 1. Kinds of genres found in the third semester.

From the sixty-seven texts, t hirty-seven were considered informative,(see extract 5 for an example) and sixteen of them were examples of academic papers. These academic papers cou they were essays written in a in the category of literary texts, because specific format, a defined literary tradition (as defined by ing them into the informative This researcher though, opted for includ category of genres, because they were se as models for the students to follow and their own texts. These “essays” contained different mode structures, that is, different internal structures, so that the ected by the pro use as examples d be included Davies, 1995). fessor to serve when writing s of rhetorical students were able to observe how these texts were developed in order to put their acquired knowledge into practice in the tasks assigned by he professor

Extract 7. Example of Instructional Text Finally, in terms of persuasive genres, the researcher found two texts which persuaded the students to practice “peer review’ and a kind of a ‘letter to the reader’ also with persuasive objectives.

Extract 9. Example of Miscellanea No literary or poetic and no popular or entertainment genres were found in this material. This researcher concluded that this might have happened because, as it also happens in the third semester, the objective of the discipline is to develop comprehension and production of written texts of higher complexity (see append ix K for the program of the discipline), reviewing the necessary aspects for writing and producing texts. This discipline also aims a communica Therefore, and persuad he area of be observed reading, sin familiar in ed students in the act of wri he more they are able to reproduce i feel more comfortable when reading something hat genre. Familiar genres always seem to be easier for the students to comprehend when reading in the classroom, for they already know what to expect when observing the general structure of the text. ce they also developing ing. Following teaching reading comprehension in academic that, the more the students are exposed to a inguistic and ive skills through the production of academic texts. he professor in this course chose texts which stimulated he literature in settings, it can specific genre, later on, be i in writing or

According to the graph, most students from the third semester demonstrated having had contact with the genres presented in the course. As Paltridge (2001) argues in his work, previous knowledge about genres is important for students who are taking a writing course, because the information that they already have about the structure of the genres will help them to produce their own texts later on. Not just the reproduction of texts, but also, reading comprehension can be positive affected by this practice in the classroom. In addition to that, the biggest part of the participants believed that the subjects brought to the classroom were, at least partially, of common knowledge to them, as illustrated below:

Graph 5. Subjects that demanded special background knowledge in the third semester (students’ questionnaire).

Fifty-seven percent of the participants answered ‘Partially’ to this question, stating that they had at least partial background knowledge about the subjects which the texts were about. This information is related to the results presented before, which demonstrated that in the previous question, 43% of the participants claimed that the texts brought to the classroom were of very specific areas which the students had only partial previous knowledge about while no participant stated that the texts were completely specific and brought totally unknwown previous information. This shows that most texts brought issues that demanded at least partial previous knowledge about the presented subject, what is the expected situation in a university context. Ry ohcervino the oranhe ahove we can conclide that moct

Differently from the third semester students, most part of the participants from the fifth semester answered that the subjects presented by the texts were of common knowledge to them, indicating that the highest amount of texts demanded general knowledge from the participants, but a very small percentage of participants suggested the opposite, what makes us believe that the students of this group did not need to have too much special knowledge in specific areas in order to be able to comprehend the texts presented. In the same line of thought, it is interesting to observe that most part of the students already had previous knowledge related to the subjects presented by the texts, as illustraded by graph number 8 below. All the students reported having at least some background knowledge related to the contents of the texts presented.