first language fails to enlightened them. This is because they have no prior knowledge on the ideas or facts written. A student majoring in Arts will have problem comprehending a text written on Chemical Engineering and vice versa. This inevitably causes ‘tunnel vision’ to resurface. They could go on reading till the last page of the text without understanding the content.Tunnel vision slows down the reading process, as readers are unable to identify or interpret any part of the text. This will cause tension, as they have to put up a lot of effort just to understand a single paragraph. Eventually they may just succumb to boredom and acquire a negative attitude towards reading.As English teachers, it is crucial for us to train our students to be good if not excellent readers. To achieve this, we need to prevent the occurrence of tunnel vision among them. As a start, before presenting any text to them we need to ensure that the content is within their level of understanding. The text we introduce must coincide with situations they are familiar with. For example, a passage on “Kite Flying In Malaysia” would be more accessible to them rather than “Bungee Jumping In New Zealand”.Environment is another factor that we need to consider. We could hardly expect students in rural area to possess the same level of language proficiency of those in the suburbs. Therefore the language we use in the text must be within their capacity. We should also break the text up into three or four sections so not only it would be easier for them to locate significant words and sentences. Understanding the first section of the text will consequentially help them interpret the others easier as they already possess a foundation of the content. We could also pick out difficult words or new words and explain them in context of the story or text. This would enable them to understand the text better and these difficult wor...
