An evaluation of the reading skills of English of the students of class ten in Bengali medium schools

Abstract

This thesis aims at evaluating the English Reading Skills of students of class ten in two Bengali Medium schools in Dhaka. It tries to identify both the strengths and weaknesses of reading skills of English with a view to helping the students to improve their reading skills. This study helps the students to know the level of their reading skills in English. It also helps the teacher to understand the students' reading capability. Our Bengali medium students' English proficiency is not in a satisfactory level and one of the reasons is their poor proficiency in reading. One of the key reasons for the low proficiency that they hardly read anything besides their textbooks. The objective of the research is to examine the subjects' different reading skills like scanning, skimming, guessing, inferring, ability to drive the impelled meaning, use of background knowledge, text organization, linking ideas and summarizing and the students' capability to implement these skills while reading. The study used the students of class x of two different Bengali medium schools as subjects and a questionnaire and a reading comprehension test as research tools. The results show that the students' reading skills are not in a satisfactory level. Finally, the study gives some suggestions for the students to improve their reading skills in English