The Role of the Instruction of Reading Comprehension Strategies in Enhancing the S1 English Studies Students’ Frequency Use and Familiarity with them

ABSTRACT :Throughout my studies and teaching English in different language centers and higher studies institutions, I have come to conclude that students consider Reading comprehension as a nightmare that frightens them and hinders their language acquisition in the Moroccan EFL Context. This may cause them to develop an internal psychological obstacle that grows as their lack of the necessary instruments or tools to overcome are not equipped with. They become lost and unaware about or unfamiliar with the necessary reading comprehension strategies that could help them to face the problem of misunderstanding or non-understanding of English texts. Respectively, this article which is only one part of my whole study aims at showing the effect of teaching reading strategies in enhancing the S1 students‟ familiarity with reading strategies and raising their frequency use. A sample of 283 University students in EFL context have been chosen randomly and have attended the usual academic reading classes, yet only 76 are subject to this survey. 38 of them constitute the experimental group who have attended the treatment regularly in one of the language centers and the other 38 participants are chosen randomly from the whole population to constitute the Control group. They all have answered the questionnaire and completed their pre-test and post-test. This research main findings indicate that the experimental group‟s frequency use of reading strategies and familiarity with them have been clearly developed, after their attendance of the explicit instruction of reading strategies or the treatment classes. Nevertheless, the control group who have attended only the regular academic reading classes seems to show no progress in terms of frequency use of reading strategies or familiarity with them. To sum up, the explicit