The Role of Reading Comprehension Passages in Consolidating Sudanese Cultural Diversity

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of the reading comprehension passages in consolidating the Sudanese students’ cultural diversity and reinforcing Sudan’s national unity in diversity. Sudanese university students of English are of various diversified cultural backgrounds. English reading comprehension curriculum has to be designed to include the accumulated aspects of Sudanese cultures to assist the enhancement of the students’ cultural diversity. The study adopts the analytical descriptive method by employing a questionnaire administered to 80 4th year students of English, College of Languages, Sudan University of Science and Technology and 40 Sudanese university teaching staff of English and the data obtained was analyzed by using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Results demonstrate a significant positive relationship between the reinforcement of Sudanese cultural diversity and the reading comprehension passages as well as adopting diverse elements of Sudanese cultures as that of ethnicities, gender, mainstream culture and subcultures, tribes, social status and integrating them into the English reading comprehension syllabus in order to consolidate cultural diversity among undergraduates.. The paper comes up with a number of recommendations as that the various aspects of the Sudanese diversified cultures have to be integrated within the reading comprehension passages in order to enhance Sudanese cultural diversity. Suggestions for further studies to be carried out on other language skills as that of listening, speaking and writing skills.