Chapter One: Introduction 1.1 Background of the Study
In today’s global world, the importance of English cannot be denied and ignored since English is the most common language spoken everywhere. Besides, English is a widely studied foreign language (Richards & Rodgers: 1995). So English is learned not only as a single language but also as a key medium of instruction to decide upon the students’ further life to be competent enough to cope with the 21century(Genenen: 2011). In the EFL context, language learning is seen as a process that requires opportunities for learners to participate in communication where making meaning is a primary goal.
Reading is one of the language skills which students need to develop and the most important of all the four language skills. Students’ academic success and their language proficiency depend largely on their ability to read and comprehend the textbook and notes they receive in different subjects (Getachew: 1996). Though reading is not the only skill to be taught in the language classroom, it is definitely the most important for many ESL/EFL learners (Grabe2002). So, reading in a second or foreign language setting continues to have an increasingly important role.
Traditionally, reading comprehension lessons have centered on a passage of text followed by questions. But the questions were usually designed to find out whether the students had understood, rather than to facilitate understanding. In other words, they were devices for testing rather than teaching (Nuttal 1982).
There are still different points of view on how reading is processed. According to Anderson (1999), there are three models of reading comprehension process: bottom-up, top-down and interactive. With the bottom up approach, reading is viewed as a process of decoding written symbols, working from smaller units to large ones. But many scholars argue that