A ROAD TO SUCCESS: STRATEGIC APPROACH TO TEACHING ACADEMIC READING IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASSES FOR INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS STUDENTS MAJORING IN SOCIAL COMMUNICATIONS AND REGIONAL STUDIES

In recent years, universities place more heavy emphasis on developing the ability of EFL students to cope with specialized authentic academic material in order to be successful in the programs of study.Reading complex specialized texts in English is part of the academic load in the English language classes at the Faculty of Law and International Relations of Borys Grinchenko Kyiv Metropolitan University in Ukraine.Raising awareness of the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies that International Relations undergraduate students can use in EFL classes in completing their reading assignments seems to be of crucial importance.The present study examines cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies of second year (bachelor level) students of Social Communications and Regional Studies academic programs enrolled in the First Foreign Language (English) classes.The data for this study were collected by means of a well-known reading strategies survey (MARSI) modified and tailored to fit the needs of the study, The correlation analysis and ttests demonstrated that gender correlates with the use of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies.The study clearly indicates the need for raising awareness of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies that the English language International Relations students could use because these strategies are directly involved in cognitive processing of the academic reading materials.In addition, the study generally showed that gender influences selection and use of reading strategies.The results revealed that, in general, females used slightly more often cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies than males.In edition the mean difference between the use of metacognitive reading strategies among males and females was slightly greater than the mean difference between the uses of cognitive reading strategies across genders.The findings further indicate that