Students’ Perspective on the Role of Reading Comprehension Passages in Enhancing Sudanese Cultural Diversity

Abstract

This paper investigates students’ perspective on the role of the reading comprehension passages in enhancing 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 based on 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 the data obtained was analyzed by using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Results demonstrate a significant positive statistical relationship between the reinforcement of Sudanese cultural diversity and the reading comprehension passages. Adopting diverse elements of Sudanese cultures as that of physical appearance, regional variations, Nomads and Bedouins, indigenous languages, types of clothing and integrating them into the English reading comprehension syllabus in order to enhance cultural diversity among undergraduates.. The paper comes up with a number of recommendations such as that: 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 have to be carried out on English language skills as that of listening, speaking and writing skills.