DEDICATION

To the most kind fathers and mothers who

always give us what we need. To our

brothers who have supported us during

our study. To our classmates and to

everybody hopes us a successful life.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
 We are so grateful to Dr. I. B. Sharma , Associate Professor
and Head of English Department for his valuable continuous help
and assistance during preparation of the thesis. We really
appreciate teacher Mohammed Al-Kaladi who spent a great deal
of his valuable time repeatedly proof-reading the manuscript with
a sense of admirable involvement and valuable suggestions. We
are profoundly indebted to them for their help to us to complete
our research.

A word of veneration and thankfulness, along with excessively

perfuming flowers is due to all our classmates specially for Miss
Lybia Al- Masaudi and Miss Nadia Al- Dhuraibi who thankfully
supported us with really valuable resources during our
preparation of this research.

II

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION………………………………………………………….. I
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT…………………………………………….. II
TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………… III
INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………… IV
CHAPTER Page

I- HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF TESL IN YEMEN………………………… 1

- Introduction………………………………………………………………….. 2
- The importance of the research……………………………………………… 3
- History of English in Yemen………………………………………………… 5
- Current status of English in Yemen………………………………………….. 6
- TESL with special reference to the reading comprehension…………………. 7
- Future prospective………………………………………………………….. 10
- Value of the study………………………………………………………… 11
- Hypotheses………………………………………………………………… 12
II- LITERATURE REVIEW………………………………………………….. 13

- Introduction………………………………………………………………… 14

- What is reading?............................................................................................ 14

- RC skills………………………………………………………………… 17

III

- SKIMMING……………………………………………………………… 17

- SCANNING……………………………………………………………… 18

- EFFECTIVE READING……………………………………………… 19
- GOOD READERS………………………………………………………… 20

- POOR READERS………………………………………………………… 21

- DEVELOPING READERS………………………………………………… 23

- READING DIFFICULTY RESEARCH……………………………………… 26

III- LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY………………………………………… 27

- DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION………………………… 27

- Introduction………………………………………………………………. 28

- Analyzing part “A”………………………………………………………. 29

- Analyzing part “B”…………………………………………………………. 30

- CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………… 50

- REFERENCES……………………………………………………………… 51

IV

INTRODUCTION

English language has recently occupied a remarkable place and

achieved the credit as the international language. It became the language

of technology, higher academic pursuits, industry, national and

international business dealings and so on. Globally, language vitally

attracted the attention of the whole world and made of itself a spoken

language of most of the world countries.

Yemen policy has recognized the great importance and the urgent
need for establishing mutual relationship with this worldwide language as
to get into the cart of globalization. However, it asserted the need for
looking deeply into the effective policies, strategies and methods fertilize
for cultivating and growing future generation of fluent speakers.
Nevertheless, it adopted within its future plans different types of strategies
that based on practical, statistical studies regarding the English language.

However, this practical study is intended to provide accurate

description of the process of reading comprehension skill with special

reference to the ESL situation in Yemen, past, current and future.

The research falls into three chapters. The first chapter focuses on

ESL situation in Yemen. It gives an overview of the historical

development of teaching English in Yemen, along with the current and
future perspectives. At the end of this chapter, the problem of the
research, along with the hypotheses is stated. The second chapter,
literature review, focuses on theoretical perspective regarding the skill of
reading. The review attempts to give a general presentation of the nature
of reading skill as an effective process as well as a comprehensive survey
of different principles elements associated always with reading. It also
states the problems of that SL/FL reader might experience in the process
of needing comprehension, as well as characteristics of both good, and
poor readers.

The third and the most important chapter, the analysis of data
obtained from the questionnaire is presented in great details. It also
provides detailed subjective interpretation of the data of the hypotheses.

At the end of this chapter, the conclusion and the research findings
included. A glossary of references are also mentioned at the end of the
research.

VI