Developing EOP Learners’ Discourse Competence through Reading by Making Inferences Case Study of Second Year Professional License Students-Drilling- KasdiMerbah University-Ouargla

Abstract

Developing discourse competence is one of the main goals of English language teaching. Reading is a key skill for the acquisition and the expansion of vocabulary. However, students find difficulties in dealing with texts especially when it comes to meaning. EOP Students, in specific, face some problems when dealing with texts in their milieus .They depend heavily on the literal translation though the context plays an essential role. Making inferences through contextual cues is one of the reading techniques that is not so used by the students. Therefore, this study is an attempt to see to what extent making inferences through contextual cues helps the students to develop their discourse competence. To make this aim comes true; we conducted an experimental study. The surprising results show a great improvement in comparison with the pre-test. For this reason, we confirm that making inferences through contextual cues enhances the development of discourse competence