TEACHING PSYCHOLOGY STUDENTS PROFESSIONALLY ORIENTED READING

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of teaching psychology students reading professionally oriented English texts. It highlights the importance of the development of reading skills in English speaking class and investigates the component skills that are critical to reading comprehension development when teaching English for specific purposes. In this research we try to analyze main curricular principles proposed by scientists to guide reading instructions which can be successfully used when teaching professionally oriented reading to psychology students. In this article we explore goals for reading instructions and try to translate them into practice in various ways in our ESP classroom. Among the component skills that are critical to reading ESP comprehension development we distinguish word-recognition efficiency, vocabulary building, main-idea comprehension practice, discourse-structure awareness, reading strategies for professional goals, reading fluency, extensive reading and students’ motivations. We pay special attention to reading fluency, extensive reading and psychology students’ reading motivation which are also considered very important component skills for reading comprehension development. We tried to understand how to prepare our psychology students for their reading demands that that they will almost certainly encounter in their professional life.