An Attitudinal Study of the Status of Extensive Literary Reading Programs in Bahrain Schools: A Study of Two Learning Systems

Abstract

This study examines the importance of the skill of reading and the role literature can play in contributing to a better standard of foreign language learning process in Bahrain state schools. It also reveals the causes behind the low level of reading habits among the majority of the students in the schools and recommends an urgent need for a constructive supplementary reading program, (i.e. literary component) to be immediately incorporated in the school English syllabi in the form of both intensive and extensive extra-curricular reading activities. In order to measure the lack of a coherent EFL extensive reading program, a set of questionnaires were administered to a randomly selected sample of students in two different educational sectors in order to measure the status of their extensive reading programs in English and also to measure their attitudes and teachers’ role towards the incorporation of a supplementary reading program in the state schools and that such a program is in fact what is needed to improve the standard of the Bahraini students in English and that improvement cannot be achieved by solely increasing the number of contact hours the students currently have in EFL.