Over a third of the participants in this study completed their undergraduate education
in Taiwan and then went on to successfully earn their masters or doctoral degrees in
the United States. They are therefore successful EFL learners and are more
experienced than other professionals in learning to read academic texts in English.
Future research efforts can focus upon: 1) how they learned to read English as an EFL
student and 2) the approaches they employed in reading college subject texts in
English at college.
In addition, 31.4% of the participants agreed that they can teach English reading
without additional training. Further studies can concentrate upon what subject-area
reading strategies are being practiced by this group of teachers and the effectiveness
of those strategies in helping students learn from texts. The data can provide
guidelines for informing EFL teachers and students about effective approaches for
learning to read English and reading to learn from texts.
In the study, factors such as educational level, teaching experience and country
where highest degree was earned might influence attitudes. In the future, these factors
should be investigated. Some other factors may include why some of the surveyed
teachers use English texts entirely in the courses they teach, why some use a certain
proportion of Mandarin and English texts in class, and why a small number of them
reject the use of English texts. The findings may assist college subject-area teachers
to make decisions upon text language selection and teaching priority.
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Tzung-yu CHENG is an associate professor at China Medical University in Taiwan, where he teaches courses in critical reading and academic reading. His current research interest includes content area reading, reading assessment, and the sociology of language learning and teaching.