Functional language analysis in teaching reading of history-related texts in EFL context
Functional language analysis in teaching reading of history-related texts in EFL context

Summary/Abstract: The integration of language and discipline-specific knowledge is widely acknowledged to play an important role in second/foreign language teaching. There is no denying that studying content subjects demands reading specifictext genres, characterized by specialized lexico-grammar and discourse structure. Therefore, it is reasonable and highly justifiable for English language teachers to incorporate elements of content area reading into classroom instructionto make it more beneficial for language learners. The aim of the presentpaper is to report the findings an action research study conducted witha view to examining the issue of constructing and performing reading tasksbased on selected history-related texts by adopting the principles of the functionallanguage analysis approach, proposed by Fang and Schleppegrell (2008,2010). The primary goal of the study was to investigate whether the techniques worked out by the advocates of this approach can be helpful to EFLlearners in reading history passages, and, consequently, whether they cancontribute to satisfactory comprehension gains by learners reading contentarea texts. The analysis of the data enabled the researcher to reach a numberof conclusions concerning the most problematic aspects facing secondaryschool readers in dealing with distinctive features of history texts, their attitudesto reading this type of texts and their evaluation of the practicesadopted to deal with discipline-specific texts.

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