Students’ Attitudes to Secondary School Reading Texts of ESP Aspects

Abstract

Most secondary school EFL teachers in Algeria claim that their students encounter real difficulties to understand scientific texts inserted in their English textbook. This study has attempted
to investigate the major factors that influence the scientific texts’ reading task and hinder the third year secondary school students’ ability to understand such type of texts. These factors incorporate
mainly some English scientific text features and actual psychological handicaps that prevent students from having an easy access to scientific texts comprehension. To achieve these aims, The
study used the data of gathered from students’ questionnaires that revealed interesting findings .The
study showed that most students did not show much motivation to study English let alone dealing with English text related to scientific topics. The students attributed part of their failure to deal with
English scientific texts’ reading to the technical vocabulary and the complex sentence structure that
often characterise such type of texts.