Today, given the boom and 'internationalization' of scientific information and its availability essentially in English, having access to this information has often been equated primarily with the ability to read in English. The need for more efficient and effective reading has become even more acute, and the demands on the ESP teacher to help future specialists in biology, chemistry, physics...etc deal with this massive amount of information through reading instruction courses, have become even more urgent. "Understanding reading in a scientific context" aims to trace the quick developments that characterized the areas of reading research and instruction in English as a Second or Foreign language and to discuss some applications of a genre-based approach to reading scientific research articles.