Investigating the Role of Comprehensive Reading in Understanding the Contextual Meaning of a Written Discourse

Abstract

This research aims at investigating to what extent Fourth Year B. A. students of English at different universities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia do not understand the contextual meaning when they read a written discourse. In this research, the quantitative method as well as the questionnaire has been adopted as a tool for collecting data relevant to the study. Here, the importance of comprehensive reading in understanding the contextual meaning of a written discourse is also brought to the light. The sample of this study comprises one hundred participants working as English language teachers at different Saudi universities. The scores obtained from the questionnaire have been compared and the results reveal that the students encountered difficulties in using comprehensive reading. The results which are obtained from the questionnaire also indicate that there is a significantly high difference in score among the students. Therefore, this points out that the fourth year university students do not understand contextual meaning to some degree when they read a written discourse.