The mediated instruction of text (MIT)‎ strategy for reading comprehension

Abstract EN

The research aims at investigating ESL students’ inability to reach clear understanding of the information presented in certain texts.

First year students in the Department of English Language, study comprehension through which they come across new passages and definitely new vocabulary but, for different reasons, they find themselves incapable of comprehending the general lines of the story sometimes or the details of the passages some other times.

Most theories on reading comprehension emphasizes the fact that gaining an appropriate understanding of certain texts requires the efforts of the instructor as much as those of students.

Therefore, it is hypothesized that by following certain reading comprehension strategy, the Mediated Instruction of Text (henceforth MIT) approach, the teacher can lead his / her students to a successful comprehension of a text.

The research illustrates different strategies of reading comprehension with an overview of their principles, structures and assumptions.

It also shows the major components of the strategy adopted, i.e.

the instructional goals for each reading phase, the basic comprehension process that guaranties the achievements of the teaching goals as well as the instructional strategies that promote the different steps in understanding and the teacher’s educational and academic role in guiding his / her students throughout the reading and comprehension process .An actual reading comprehension lesson is analyzed according to the (MIT) strategy and clearly shown in the diagram that represents the basic categories of the strategy.

The analysis illustrates how students activate their prior knowledge, predict content and connect ideas in a gradual way minimizing critical problems in comprehending any passage by following significant learning strategies along the process of reading.

Finally, it is concluded that the (MIT) strategy of reading comprehension is critical and effective in helping ESL students make use of the language skills they have with their prior knowledge and expectations to gain a clear and successful comprehension of a specific text.

The strategies diagram shows clearly through its basic categories that the comprehension process is followed from its first steps before, during, and after reading taking into consideration the students’ readiness, understanding and retention.

All this will be integrated with the basic needs of learning like questioning, brainstorming, creating complex thoughts, surveying ideas, building word meaning, responding to purpose questions and summarizing.