The Impact of Teaching IELTS Reading on Improving Reading Abilities of Bahraini Secondary School Students

Abstract

ABSTRACT : This dissertation investigates "The Impact of Teaching IELTS Reading on Improving the Reading Abilities of Bahraini Secondary School Students". Also, it seeks to identify the effectiveness level of teaching IELTS reading for secondary stage students in Bahrain, illustrates the extent to which reading competencies of the secondary stage students in Bahrain get improved, and extent to which overall language proficiency of secondary stage students' in Bahrain get improved. Moreover, it seeks to assess the impact of teaching IELTS reading on improvement of students' reading competencies and improvement of the overall language competencies. The study used both descriptive and exploratory research methods. The study sample included 60 members chosen representing 26 secondary schools in Bahrain. Those responded to the questionnaire that was electronically distributed to them. The questionnaire consisted of 32 items that are classified into three sections covering; (a) Effectiveness of teaching IELTS reading comprehension passage in the secondary schools in the Kingdom of Bahrain with 12 items, (b) Improvement of students' reading competencies with 10, and (c) Improvements of students' overall language proficiency, with 10 items. After collecting the responses of the sample participants, the researcher used the SPSS, version 22 to analyze the collected data and she reached some important results. The results showed that teaching IELTS reading for secondary stage students in Bahrain is effective as the items covering this got a mean score of (3.49). The results also showed that there is a good improvement in the students' reading competencies due to teaching IELTS reading comprehension passages in the secondary stage schools in the kingdom of Bahrain as the average mean score for the ten items covering this was (3.49). Moreover, the results showed the presence of a good level of improvement in the students' overall language proficiency due to teaching IELTS for the secondary stage students in Bahrain as the items covering this got an aggregate mean score of (3.47).