Critical Reading and Content-Area Understanding in Third Cycle of Basic Education : an exploratory research

النوع : Thèse

Critical reading is an essential element in all content areas; however it’s not the case in some Lebanese public and private schools. Many students who study the sciences in English explain the scientific concepts in Arabic. Several teachers think that the lack of using English in these classes is due to the need for critical thinking and analysis which are two types of high cognitive abilities that students do not have enough experience of. The research is conducted in three intermediate schools- two private schools and one public school. The aim of this research is to explore to what extent teachers and students are familiar with critical reading strategies in different content area classrooms and to find out how this may affect their learning of the sciences. Thus, this study is meant to investigate how content area teachers and students in three Lebanese schools are aware of critical reading strategies. Data were collected from different instruments such as the review of documents, books, and articles regarding reading and content areas, alongside with teacher’s and student’s questionnaires. The findings are statistically processed to get the number of content teachers, in particular, science teachers, who apply content-based reading strategies at the intermediate level. The findings of this study suggest a list of reading strategies, activities and exercises that develop reading in the content area during the three stages of reading: the pre, during, and post reading phases. It also reflects how critical thinking is needed for students to learn successfully from the reading tasks.