Systemic Functional Linguistics – An aid to improve reading comprehension at secondary schools in Tucumán , Argentina.

Adriana BARRIONUEVO
(Escuela Normal Superior en Lenguas Vivas “J. B. Alberdi”)
María Lelia PICO
(Universidad Nacional de Tucumán – Argentina)

ABSTRACT: EFL students find it very hard to achieve a good level of reading comprehension. More often than not our students of English do not understand what they read. Besides, EFL teachers in San Miguel de Tucuman, Argentina face some common problems: over crowded classrooms,opportunities to use the target language outside the classroom, officially prescribed syllabi, etc. All these factors make it difficult for teachers to meet each student’s need. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a proposal for teachers of English in the context of the reading class. The paper is directly related to the reality of the EFL classroom, shown by a survey answered by a group of teachers working at state secondary schools. We believe that a Systemic Functional Linguistics approach to text analysis could enable learners to interpret the different meanings conveyed in a written text, what would lead them to a better comprehension of reading texts.

KEY-WORDS: reading comprehension – EFL students - classroom - problems