Enhancing reading skills through literary circles strategy in EFL students

Abstract

Introduction. Clearly, in a country with poor reading habits, the use of literary circles is an exceptional alternative to inspire students to read independently and expose them to the foreign language. Spoken and written words are the foundation of life, children who read for pleasure every day not only do better in school, but also express themselves better, make friends and have certain key life skills. Objective. Analyze the benefit of literary circles on the reading attitudes of EFL students. Methodology. Quantitative methods were applied to determine the effectiveness of the research, as well as qualitative methods to analyze the progress of reading skills in students. The type of research is experimental, for which 67 students of sixth grade A and B of basic general education were carried out. Participants were classified using the AlTzar tool, distributing into an experimental group and a control group. The experimental group was exposed to the reading strategy two hours a week for a month. A single pre-test and post-test were administered to the entire population as a tool to collect the information necessary for the corresponding analysis. Results. At the end of the study, the results of the post-test of the students were compared with the results of the pre-test by means of the T Student test, to later be contrasted with approaches, theories and conceptualizations of different authors of similar scientific investigations that supported the relevance of the initial hypothesis. Conclusion. The relationship between literary circles in the development of reading comprehension skills is of great importance since it allows students to learn within a framework of understanding the purposes and objectives of the target text, both the explicit written text and the implicit information and the one based on the facts of the story.