Problems of non-native speakers of English when reading biology text

النوع : Mémoire

Non- native speakers of English around the globe frequently need to read special ized English language material as part of their university course work. Experien ce with bilingual students has shown that they are soon turned off by texts, whi ch are too difficult for them to read. The problems these students face when rea ding science texts may have negative effects on their achievements in science an d may ultimately lead them to abandon scientific fields. Thus solving these prob lems should be one of the major goals of science education. The aim of this stud y was to investigate the problems of non- native speakers of English when reading biology texts.To identi fy these problems, fifty- one Arab students studying at the American university of Beirut, distributed among three different biology courses were asked to read science texts from assigned course textbooks. After reading the texts, these stu dents were asked to underline words and sentences that are roblematic for them.T hey were also asked to specify words that they look up in the dictionary. Eight of the participants were also interviewed to complement findings achieved from a nalyzing the underlined words and sentences and those words looked up in the dic tionary. Results showed that the students had both syntactic and lexical problem s. For example, students faced problems in comprehending complex sentences, simp le sentences, and grammatical metaphors. Moreover, the students faced more probl ems in comprehending technical than non-technical terms present in the texts.