Perspectives and Attitudes of Civil Aviation Staff towards Reading English Comprehension. A case study

Abstract

This study is an attempt to determine the Civil Aviation Staff' perspectives and attitudes towards their difficulties in reading English comprehension, It also intends to reveal the potential obstacles or difficulties that may hinder the staff from comprehending reading English texts in the field of aviation at Civil Aviation Training Institute (CATI), and Khartoum Airport. Comprehension is the common problem that they have nowadays. Which is misunderstanding some of English passages or texts, therefore, reading is one of the most skills to acquire knowledge in each discipline within the information explosion times; a good English reading ability is indispensible, so it aims at investigating the difficulties of aviation staff in reading English comprehension in both Aviation and General English. The researcher hypothesizes that the civil aviation staff have some difficulties in their reading English comprehension. They considered as outcome of either complexity of grammar (structure) or complexity or uncommon vocabulary. In order to understand some of their difficulties in reading English comprehension and how they will be able to differentiate between Aviation and Plain language way of reading to apply them correctly in the field of aviation. For the sake of investigating these problems, researcher designed an empirical method which is a questionnaire with 20 reliable statements for 50 aviation staff as a tester. And it helps to generate more reliable results according to their responses. Then researcher has classified the study into five chapters, where in chapter one; introduces and establishes the topic, questions and objectives. Then highlights the problem and significance of the study. It also outlines study methodology briefly, and defines its terminologies. In chapter two, shows the review of literature. Where previous studies and some knowledgeable information has been stated out in a way that enables the readers to satisfy their needs in getting more about reading English comprehension in both aviation and plain language. Then briefly in chapter three discusses the methodology which is a questionnaire survey to collect the staff`s attitudes. While in chapter four, presents the results and analyses the data. It includes the results collected through the empirical investigation. In chapter five presents a summary of the findings that staff committed which show their response towards reading English comprehension is not up to the ICAO and general English standards. And makes some