Ingles

Building Reading Comprehension

Through Recognition of Cognates





Sebastian Jaramillo Rivera

Katerine Trejos Rivera







Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira

Licenciatura Teaching English

Pereira, Colombia 2010







Building Reading Comprehension

Through Recognition of Cognates



Statement of the Problem

This study pretends to analyze how thenative language can affect in a positive way the recognition of words on the target language (English language) through the use of cognates as a strategy in function to improve reading comprehension in L2. Cognates are words that present morphological and phonetic similarities in two languages even when they have the same meaning. The interaction between the reader and the text is the foundationof the comprehension, since in the process of understanding, the reader relates the information that is presented with the previous knowledge in his/her mind. This process of relating new information to the former one is the process of the comprehension (Olarte Ortega, 1998). The need that second language teachers to create reading strategies that facilitate English language learning in order toimprove second language learning process and hooking students in the bilingual experience through reading strategies, but, before to create reading L2 strategies, we have to take into account the previous experience that students own in their mother tongue, and reinforce these previous knowledge in L1 in function to support the acquisition and improvement of reading skills on reading comprehensionin L2. The governmental system of evaluation used to measure the knowledge of the students get hooked up principally by the use of the comprehension of reading , a great example is the ICFES exam (Instituto Colombiano para el Fomento de la Educación Superoior). This evaluation system requires a high level of reading comprehension and critical analysis of the problems in the exam. Previous studiesdemonstrated that the Colombian population, principally youth population possess a poor reading comprehension performance and they do not have enough skills to be competent reader or they do not like reading. As a result of these issues, a great part of the students who take part in the ICFES evaluation can obtain low grades in their test (mineducacion, 2007).

According with Idol (1997),reading success may be accompanied of direct instruction as part of the reading process. Reading comprehension is not only the responsibility of the students, the teachers in the roll of facilitators, must look for useful strategies or techniques in the field of reading comprehension that help students in order to understand a text. Likewise the material used for this purpose must be put into theteacher´s curriculum in order to make the reading activity enjoyable. Before trying to put students into a good reading comprehension development in a second language is necessary that learners have a good reading proficiency in the mother tongue. According with Colombiestad (2008), that expresses that Colombian population prefer spend their time indifferent activities like watching television orlistening music. The culture of reading is something that Colombian society does not consider for the enjoyment or simply for academic necessity. The non estimation reading is an issue that starts from first steps of knowledge, and the family environment does not help to contribute in the development of reading as a habit.

Despite of the fact that Colombian government has implemented a newbilingual educational strategy in order to improve the acquisition of a second language, this does not work totally so far in all the Colombian educational institutions. One of the possible reasons why the Plan Nacional de Bilinguismo does not apply with all the educational expectative can be the negative feeling that scholar population and people in general have about learning a second...