Recibido: 25/11/2022│
Aprobado: 02/03/2023
Generalization of the methodology for training
students in reading comprehension in English (Original).
Generalización de la metodología para la
preparación de los estudiantes en comprensión lectora en inglés (Original).
Ana Velia Domínguez León. Licenciada en Lengua Inglesa con Segunda
Lengua Extranjera. Doctora en Ciencias Pedagógicas. Profesora Titular. Universidad
de Granma. Bayamo. Cuba. [adominguezl@udg.co.cu] 
.
Maritza Núñez Arévalo. Licenciada en Educación en la especialidad de Inglés. Especialista en Docencia Universitaria. Profesor
Auxiliar. Universidad de Matanzas. Matanzas. Cuba. [maritza.nunez@umcc.cu] .
María de los Ángeles Olivera Amaro. Licenciada en Educación en la especialidad de Inglés. Profesor Instructor. Universidad
de Granma. Bayamo. Cuba. [ moliveraa@udg.co.cu ] 
.
Abstract
The present work aims to present the results of the generalization of a
methodology for the preparation of university students in reading comprehension
in English at the Universidad de Granma, applied for the first time in 2022.
Through the generalization of the methodology in various careers, the students
were able to obtain and demonstrate the communicative skills that express their
ability to understand texts written in English at an A2 level. They were also
able to use English as an instrument for academic, employment and research in
their respective careers, in such a way that it allowed them to solve problems
and situations from their specific educational contexts. In addition, the
levels of development of skills for the search and management of information
from different sources increased, as well as communication skills that
contribute to their efficient academic training and as future professionals. Furthermore,
the teachers involved contributed to the transformation of traditional didactic
approaches in the teaching-learning process of reading comprehension in
English, as well as to a dynamization of the process to satisfy the needs and
interests of the students. These transformations contributed to achieving a
notable increase in the quality and promotion of the results obtained in the
English proficiency test carried out in December 2022, which allows us to
sustain that it contributes to the improvement of the process under
investigation, according to current educational policies.
Keywords: reading
comprehension; english, methodology; a2 level.
Resumen
El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo la
exposición de los resultados de la generalización de una metodología para la
preparación de los estudiantes universitarios en comprensión lectora en inglés
en la Universidad de Granma, aplicada por vez primera en el año 2022. A través
de la generalización de la metodología en varias carreras, los estudiantes fueron capaces de obtener y
demostrar las competencias comunicativas que expresan sus capacidades para comprender
textos escritos en inglés con eficiencia en un nivel A2 y utilizar el inglés
como instrumento de formación académica, laboral e investigativa en sus
respectivas carreras, de forma tal que les permitió resolver problemas y
situaciones característicos de sus contextos formativos específicos. Se incrementaron, además, los niveles de desarrollo de
habilidades para la búsqueda y manejo de la información proveniente de
diferentes fuentes, así como de habilidades comunicativas que
contribuyen a su eficiente formación académica y como futuros profesionales.
Por su parte, los profesores implicados contribuyeron a la
transformación de los enfoques didácticos tradicionales en el proceso de
enseñanza-aprendizaje de la comprensión lectora en inglés, así como a una dinamización de dicho proceso para
satisfacer las necesidades e intereses de los estudiantes. Estas transformaciones
contribuyeron a lograr un incremento notable en la calidad y promoción de los
resultados obtenidos en los exámenes de certificación de inglés realizados en diciembre
de 2022, lo que
permite sustentar que se contribuye al perfeccionamiento del proceso objeto de
investigación, según las políticas educativas actuales.
Palabras claves: comprensión lectora; inglés; metodología, nivel A2.
Introduction
Currently, it is an urgent need in our country
to have professionals who not only perform successfully in their specialty, but
are also capable of communicating in more than one language, especially
English. That is why, the Ministry of Higher Education of the Republic of Cuba
(MES) adopts the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR)
(Council of Europe, 2002), in 2016, as the common base that guides the national
policy on the design of standards, foreign language courses, evaluation
instruments, teaching methodologies and didactic materials.
University students, then, must obtain and demonstrate the communicative
competencies that express their abilities to understand and express themselves
orally and in writing in English with efficiency, initially at a basic level
equivalent to an A2 and moving towards an intermediate level equivalent to a
B1, following the structure by levels established for Cuban higher education.
This allows them to use this language as an instrument of academic, labor and
research training in their respective careers to expand their knowledge and
general culture, and express their national identity.
Based
on this goal, teachers of the Language Center, at the Universidad de Granma,
have carried out important research dealing with the didactical treatment to
the teaching-learning process of English (Aguilera et al, 2021; Carrazana et al, 2021; Domínguez et al, 2018 and 2022; Núñez et al, 2021; López et al, 2017 and 2021; Serrano et
al, 2021; Sosa and Carrazana, 2021; Sutil et al, 2022; Tamayo et al, 2021; Vinajera
et al, 2021). However, insufficiencies persist in the development of the four
skills of verbal activity (reading comprehension, listening comprehension, oral
and written expression) by the students, and there is a lack of contextualized
theoretical reference that limits the improvement of the process in question.
These deficiencies were evident in the results of the proficiency test applied
to students in December 2021, at the Universidad de Granma, which shown that
one of the most difficult skills was reading comprehension.
That is why, based on the inadequacies detected in
students' reading comprehension, expressed through: inaccuracies in selecting
relevant specific information from written texts; limited interpretative
process of the implicit textual information, from the disciplinary demands;
meager process of determining the general, main and secondary ideas; as well as
insufficiency in the interpretative synthesis of the processed texts, based on
the requirements of the specific training processes, a methodology for the
preparation of students in reading comprehension in English at an A2 level,
according to CEFR requirements, was designed and implemented in Physical
Culture major, since February to July, 2022.
After achieving satisfactory results, this methodology
was then generalized for students of
the A2 English course groups of Agricultural Engineering, Mechanical Engineering,
Forestry Engineering and Veterinary Medicine and Zootecnics, since September to
December 2022.
The objective of this article is to present the most
relevant results of the generalization of the methodology to develop reading
comprehension in English in students at an A2 level, at the Universidad de
Granma.
Materials and methods
The methodology was applied
for the first time in 2022 to a sample of 22 students of the A2 English course,
belonging to the Physical Culture major, at the University of Granma. After
achieving satisfactory results in the proficiency test in July 2022, in which a
92.8% promotion was obtained, it was decided to generalize this methodology to
other A2 English courses, made up of 224 students of the first and second year of
Agricultural Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Forest Engineering, and Veterinary
Medicine and Zootechnics.
Theoretical
methods were used, such as documentary analysis, to collect written information
on the subject; analysis-synthesis, which went through the entire research
process; inductive-deductive, to derive conclusions and establish
generalizations. Similarly, empirical methods and techniques were used, which
allowed characterizing the current state of the teaching-learning process of
reading comprehension in English at the Universidad de Granma and determining
the existing shortcomings. The research was based on the communicative approach, task
based work and student centered.
Results and Discussion
From the socio-cultural point of view, with the
methodology, the value system is strengthened with communication and even more,
the interaction that occurs between students and between them and their
teachers, allow mutual influences, enables full development of personality, and
a critical and transformative attitude, not only of the student, but also of
the surrounding world. This supports the fact that the essence of each
individual, his personality, is the system of relationships that he establishes
with those around him. Therefore, students acquire a scientific conception of
the world based on knowledge of science, develop their intellectual capacities
and acquire an aesthetic, moral and labor education as well as a
political-ideological one in accordance with social principles.
This methodology not only contributes to the
preparation of the student in the theoretical and practical order to perform in
a certain profession, but also offers a training that comprehensively covers
the development of their personality. When we speak of integral formation we
understand that whose dimensions are spiritual (being), cognitive (knowing),
socio-affective (feeling), technical-professional (knowing how to do) and
communicative (knowing how to express oneself). An integration between knowing,
doing and being is pursued, thus attending to the multidimensional development
of personality. Along with their own cultural knowledge and knowing how to
operate with them in practice, this procedure has paid attention to
humanistic-cultural training that allows students to cultivate their
spirituality, their development as men and their moral preparation for the
exercise of the profession.
This practical contribution suggests tasks that
promote reflection, creativity, the desire to participate by expressing
opinions and ideas, respecting individual criteria and, above all, stimulating
student leadership. It allows facing the teaching of reading from the
understanding and interpretation of socio-cultural contexts in contact, focused
on the ability of the student-reader to expand their reading skills as they
explore new cultural contexts.
In the treatment of comprehension at this level, the
students were able to acquire an independence in the analysis that allowed
them, while appropriating the content of the text, to perceive the ideological,
ethical, moral and artistic values of the work, that is to say, being able to
interpret and express the work read externally.
Therefore, it contributes to guarantee the development
of abilities and skills of these students whose defined purpose is oriented
towards the achievement of goals; that is, a means to achieve an end and not
the end itself.
The methodology places the student at the center of
the process, giving him an active participation. It also contributes to
developing an ideological political education based on a scientific,
materialist, dialectical and humanist conception of the surrounding world,
since students assimilate language as a means of communication between men and
as an instrument to know the world that surrounds them, developing in them
feelings of solidarity towards other peoples. In this way, it contributes to
the elimination of communication barriers related to socio-linguistic-cultural
aspects.
Students not only systematize knowledge in a
productive way, but also discover their own possibilities to search for valid
information, determine their socio-cultural potential, and in an original and
creative way, seek solutions to the contradictions exposed. In this case, they
will be able to distinguish between their expectations, interests, values,
assumptions, about reality and the data, and will be able to carry out a valid
analysis of them.
Regarding
the impact on the pedagogical order, this methodology provides important
results. It allows to a better preparation on the part of the teachers, which
results in the quality of the lessons, which, in turn, influences the improvement
of promotion results. In such conditions, the work in the classroom becomes
more pleasant, and active.
To
do this, the teacher promotes the development of referential knowledge,
facilitating the material and mental conditions that allow the student to
learn, share, and integrate the cognitive aspects inherent to the sociocultural
context of origin.
This
process, from the student's point of view, leads to a constant self-assessment
of their understanding, which allows them to generate new meanings and senses
by assuming a hermeneutic position. The teacher's activity, then, will be aimed
at guiding and verifying the flexibility of the student's linguistic and
cultural patterns towards a consequent transformation that implies a new
approach to the text.
Therefore,
from didactics, the student-reader assumes, relationally, the concepts of
language, society, and culture, manifested in textual linguistics. In this way,
they will be in a position to recognize the functional threads that
reciprocally transcend them: that is, language as a dynamizer of culture,
carrier of meanings, and instrument, at the same time, of the communication of
the spiritual values of a given society, and culture, in turn, creator of
languages and channeled by them. In this framework, therefore, the student
configures the elements that give identity to the textual information,
characterized by the flexibility of its procedures given the variable nature of
language and communication.
Regarding
the scientific and technological aspect, the implementation of this proposal
has a marked impact, since students, by obtaining better results in their
learning, are more efficient in their studies and will be more productive in
their future profession, having greater capacity and ability, especially in the
search and processing of technical scientific materials that contribute to
perfecting their work.
It was verified, therefore, through the evaluation process of the
generalization of this methodology, in order to improve the teaching-learning
process of reading comprehension in English for an A2 level that the most
relevant transformations were:
In students:
- Increase in
intrinsic motivation when facing a new didactic alternative in the dynamics of
the teaching-learning process of reading comprehension in English at an A2
level, as this process reveals their academic and professional needs.
-Development of an
efficient reading from a dynamic centered on the student as self-manager of his
own textual processing.
-Increased levels
of development of both information search and management skills as well as
communication skills that contribute to their efficient academic training and
as future professionals.
-Development of
communicative competence in English to solve problems and situations
characteristic of their specific training contexts using this foreign language
as a working tool. Among the fundamental aspects are:
- Infer the
textual information from the use of their prior knowledge and the prediction
and anticipation of the information with visual support.
- Identify the basic procedures required for the development of the
reading comprehension process.
- Recognize the textual structure, capturing the coherence between the
ideas.
- Understand the main ideas of texts of medium complexity, generally
short, as long as the subject is familiar.
- Identify the intentionality of the text.
- Hierarchize the information in
such a way that it allows them to recognize the original textual meanings.
- Understand short and simple texts that contain very frequent vocabulary.
- Create, albeit with effort, a simple and elemental intertextual model of
the basic aspects of the text, where the intention of reading is evidenced.
- Understand the meaning of
informative written material, as well as conversations, simple descriptions of
rules and instructions, signs, announcements, signs, brochures and letters,
identifying the general and specific information they contain.
- Consult texts of medium complexity of their specialty in order to find
the desired information and know how to collect information from the different
parts of a text, or from different texts, in order to carry out a specific task
- Recognize the line of argument in the treatment of the matter presented,
although not necessarily in full detail.
- Recognize significant ideas from simple newspaper
articles that deal with everyday topics.
In the teachers
involved in the process:
-Contribution to the transformation of traditional
didactic approaches in the teaching-learning process of reading comprehension
in English at an A2 level, based on a new logic of academic reading based on
its intertextual quality in order to develop holistic learning- comprehensive.
-Invigoration of the teaching-learning process of
reading comprehension in English at an A2 level to meet the needs and interests
of students.
-Contribution to the improvement of the
teaching-learning process object of the investigation.
-Increase in professional
improvement. In this sense, the
requirements of the teaching-learning process of reading comprehension in
English at the university level are fulfilled, according to the current
requirements supported by the CEFR, since the students managed to certify the
A2 level of English in the proficiency test, in December 2022. From this
derives the need to achieve efficient communicative competence in students, in
such a way that English better fulfills its function of being an instrument of
study, work and culture.
Conclusions
1. The logical-dialectical correlation
that is developed through the qualitative interpretation of the results
achieved with the generalization of the methodology made it possible to
corroborate its feasibility.
2. The transformations achieved in
students and teachers, derived from the generalization of the methodology,
allow us to sustain that it contributes to the improvement of the teaching-learning
process of reading comprehension in English at an A2 level.
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