EFL READING FOR STUDENTS OF PHILOSOPHY

EFL READING FOR STUDENTS OF PHILOSOPHY Josefa J. Mardijono Petra Christian University
josefa@petra.ac.id Abstract There was a high demand for the students of the Philosophy and Theology Department to read Philosophy texts in English. However, the students lacked the English reading skills complicated by their English language inhibition. Addressing the students’ problems in this paper, I propose a reading course design the implementation of which was carried out holistically, to attend to both the cognitive and affective sides of the students, enhancing their motivation and positive concepts about themselves and others, and building their self-confidence. Considering the students’ learning needs and their challenges, I designed a 16-week (sixteen week) reading course consisting of introduction to some understanding about reading skills, sentence patterns, connecting words, referents, and some tips to reading and understanding Philosophy. Starting from some general reading texts, specific texts on philosophy later became the focus. Preceded by some informal talk in each meeting, some songs and poems were also incorporated to attend to the affective side to address the students’ inhibition. The learning activities were of various types, individual reading, pair work, group work to class discussion, and reading theater to engage the students in active participation. Besides the class meetings, the students were engaged in home assignments, vocabulary expansion and extensive reading. The evaluation of the course and its implementation were revealed through the students’ reflection of their learning experience and their self-evaluation, which gives some positive inputs on the teaching and learning process. Despite their struggle against difficulties and problems, they all succeeded to overcome their fear and uneasy feelings towards English texts. It also revealed the students’ intention to carry on the learning process by self study to improve their ability in reading Philosophy in English.