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Article
Author(s)
Majid Elahi Shirvan
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DOI:10.17265/1539-8072/2016.04.002
Affiliation(s)
University of Bojnord, Bojnord, Iran
ABSTRACT
General English course at Iranian universities has always been a controversial issue since the students taking this course are rather weak in English proficiency and need more authentic instructions based on accurate need analysis. The materials applied in this course are mainly focused on reading comprehension. Thus, the purpose of the present study was to improve General English university students’ main sub-skills of reading comprehension and see the effect of the possible changes in terms of time and the fields of study of the students. To do this, 168 university students taking General English course at university of Bojnord, including humanities, engineering, physical education, and sciences, received instruction on the main sub-skills of reading comprehension after taking a pre-test sample TOELF section of reading comprehension. After 16 sessions of 90 minute instruction, they took the post-test section of TOEFL sample of reading comprehension. Mixed between within subject analysis of variance was used to assess the impact of instruction for the four groups of students from pre-test to post-test. The findings of the study indicated that the effect of instruction in terms of time, from pre-test to post-test, and the interaction of time and fields of study were significant. Besides, changes for 10 sub-skills were the same among the four fields of study.
KEYWORDS
General English, reading comprehension, skills
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References
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Anmarkrud, O., Bråten, I., & Strømsø, H. I. (2014). Multiple-documents literacy: Strategic processing, source awareness, and argumentation when reading multiple conflicting documents. Learning and Individual Differences, 30, 64-76.
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Badecker, W., & Straub, K. (2002). The processing role of structural constraints on interpretation of pronouns and anaphors. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 28(4), 748.
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Block, E. (1992). See how they read: Comprehension monitoring of L1 and L2 readers. TESOL Quarterly, 26(2), 319-343.
Bråten, I., & Strømsø, H. I. (2011). Measuring strategic processing when students read multiple texts. Metacognition and Learning, 6(2), 111-130.
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Cain, K., Oakhill, J., & Lemmon, K. (2004). Individual differences in the inference of word meanings from context: The influence of reading comprehension, vocabulary knowledge, and memory capacity. Journal of educational psychology, 96(4), 671.
Canale, M., & Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics, 1(1), 1-47.
Carrell, P. L. (1998). Can reading strategies be successfully taught? Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 21, 1-20.
Chen, M. H., Gualberto, P. J., & Tameta, C. L. (2009). The development of metacognitive awareness inventory. TESOL Journal, 1, 43-57.
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Duggan, G. B., & Payne, S. J. (2009). Text skimming: The process and effectiveness of foraging through text under time pressure. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 15(3), 228.
Elahi, M. S., & Taherian, T. (2015). An ecological exploration of the culture of English as an international language among Iranian English language teachers in light of Vygotsky’s genotypic approach. Sino-US English Teaching, 12(8), 608-625.
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Hymes, D. (1967). Models of the interaction of language and social setting. Journal of Social Issues, 23(2), 8-28.
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Ikeda, M., & Takeuchi, O. (2006). Clarifying the differences in learning EFL reading strategies: An analysis of portfolios. System, 34, 384-398.
Kaivanpanah, S., & Alavi, S. M. (2008). The role of linguistic knowledge in word-meaning inferencing. System, 36(2), 172-195.
Karbalaei, A. (2010). A comparison of the global reading strategies used by EFL and ESL readers. The Reading Matrix, 10(2), 165-180.
Kennison, S. M. (2003). Comprehending the pronouns her, him, and his: Implications for theories of referential processing. Journal of Memory and Language, 49(3), 335-352.
Kobayashi, K. (2010). Strategic use of multiple texts for the evaluation of arguments. Reading Psychology, 31, 121-149.
Koda, K. (2005). Insights into second language reading: A cross-linguistic approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lee, K. R. (2007). Strategy awareness-raising for success: Reading strategy instruction in the EFL context (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park).
Levine, A., Ferenz, O., & Reves, T. (2000). EFL academic reading and modern technology: How can we turn our students into independent critical readers. TESL-EJ, 4(4), 1-9.
Li, F. (2010). A study of English reading strategies used by senior middle school students. Asian Social Science, 6(10), 184-192.
Maleki, A., & Zangani, E. (2007). A survey on the relationship between English language proficiency and the academic achievement of Iranian EFL students. Asian EFL Journal, 9(1), 86-96.
Mason, L., Scirica, F., & Salvi, L. (2006). Effects of beliefs about meaning construction and task instructions on interpretation of narrative text. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 31, 411-437.
McNeil, L. (2011). Investigating the contributions of background knowledge and reading comprehension strategies to L2 reading comprehension: An exploratory study. Reading and Writing, 24, 883-902.
Munby, J. (1978). Communicative syllabus design: A sociolinguistic model for defining the content of purpose-specific language programmers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nuttall, C. (2005). Teaching reading skills in a foreign language (2nd ed.). Oxford: Macmillan.
Oakhill, J. (1993). Children’s difficulties in reading comprehension. Educational Psychology Review, 5(3), 223-237.
Oczkus, L. D. (2003). Reciprocal teaching at work strategies for improving reading comprehension. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Oxford, R. L. (2003). Language learning styles and strategies: Concepts and relationships. Iral, 41(4), 271-278.
Paris, S. G., Lipson, M. Y., & Wixson, K. K. (1983). Becoming a strategic reader. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8(3), 293-316.
Pearson, P. D., Hiebert, E. H., & Kamil, M. L. (2007). Vocabulary assessment: What we know and what we need to learn. Reading Research Quarterly, 42(2), 282-296.
Poole, A. (2005). Gender differences in reading strategy use among ESL college students. Journal of College Reading and Learning, 36(1), 7-20.
Pretorius, E. J. (2005). English as a second language learner differences in anaphoric resolution: Reading to learn in the academic context. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26(4), 521-539.
Rose, E. (2011). The phenomenology of on-screen reading: University students’ lived experience of digitised text. British Journal of Educational Technology, 42(3), 515-526.
Rupp, A. A., Ferne, T., & Choi, H. (2006). How assessing reading comprehension with multiple-choice questions shapes the construct: A cognitive processing perspective. Language testing, 23(4), 441-474.
Serafini, F. (2004). Lessons in comprehension: Explicit instruction in the reading workshop. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Sweet, A. P., & Snow, C. E. (2003). Rethinking reading comprehension. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Van Wyk, A. L. (2001). The development and implementation of an English language and literature programme for low-proficiency tertiary learners. Publisher not identified.
Wolf, F., Gibson, E., & Desmet, T. (2004). Discourse coherence and pronoun resolution. Language and Cognitive Processes, 19(6), 665-675.
Wood, E., Motz, M., & Willoughby, T. (1998). Examining students’ retrospective memories of strategy development. Journal of educational psychology, 90(4), 698.
Zhang, L. J., & Anual, S. B. (2008). The role of vocabulary in reading comprehension: The case of secondary school students learning English in Singapore. RELC Journal, 39(1), 51-76.
Zhang, L. J., & Wu, A. (2009). Chinese senior high school EFL students’ metacognitive awareness and reading-strategy use. Reading in a Foreign Language, 21(1), 37-59.
Zwaan, R. A., & Brown, C. M. (1996). The influence of language proficiency and comprehension skill on situation-model construction. Discourse Processes, 21(3), 289-327.
Al-Jarf, R. S. (2001). Processing of cohesive ties by EFL Arab college students. Foreign language annals, 34(2), 141-151.
Anderson, N. J. (1991). Individual differences in strategy use in second language reading and testing. The Modern Language Journal, 75, 460-472.
Anmarkrud, O., Bråten, I., & Strømsø, H. I. (2014). Multiple-documents literacy: Strategic processing, source awareness, and argumentation when reading multiple conflicting documents. Learning and Individual Differences, 30, 64-76.
Arnold, N. (2009). Online extensive reading for advanced foreign language learners: An evaluation study. Foreign Language Annals, 42(2), 340-366.
Badecker, W., & Straub, K. (2002). The processing role of structural constraints on interpretation of pronouns and anaphors. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 28(4), 748.
Barnett, M. A. (1988). Reading through context: How real and perceived strategy use affects L2 comprehension. Modern Language Journal, 150-162.
Berkowitz, E., & T. Cicchelli. (2004). Metacognitive strategy use in reading of gifted high achieving and gifted underachieving middle school. Education and Urban Society, 37(1), 37-57.
Block, E. (1992). See how they read: Comprehension monitoring of L1 and L2 readers. TESOL Quarterly, 26(2), 319-343.
Bråten, I., & Strømsø, H. I. (2011). Measuring strategic processing when students read multiple texts. Metacognition and Learning, 6(2), 111-130.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (2009). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Brown, H. D. (2004). Language assessment: Principles and classroom practices. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Cain, K., & Towse, A. S. (2008). To get hold of the wrong end of the stick: Reasons for poor idiom understanding in children with reading comprehension difficulties. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 51(6), 1538-1549.
Cain, K., Oakhill, J., & Lemmon, K. (2004). Individual differences in the inference of word meanings from context: The influence of reading comprehension, vocabulary knowledge, and memory capacity. Journal of educational psychology, 96(4), 671.
Canale, M., & Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics, 1(1), 1-47.
Carrell, P. L. (1998). Can reading strategies be successfully taught? Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 21, 1-20.
Chen, M. H., Gualberto, P. J., & Tameta, C. L. (2009). The development of metacognitive awareness inventory. TESOL Journal, 1, 43-57.
Chomsky, N. (1964). Aspects of the theory of syntax (DTIC Document).
Crawley, R. A., & Stevenson, R. J. (1990). Reference in single sentences and in texts. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 19(3), 191-210.
Demel, M. C. (1990). The relationship between overall reading comprehension and comprehension of coreferential ties for second language readers of English. TESOL Quarterly, 24(2), 267-292.
Duggan, G. B., & Payne, S. J. (2009). Text skimming: The process and effectiveness of foraging through text under time pressure. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 15(3), 228.
Elahi, M. S., & Taherian, T. (2015). An ecological exploration of the culture of English as an international language among Iranian English language teachers in light of Vygotsky’s genotypic approach. Sino-US English Teaching, 12(8), 608-625.
Farhady, H., Jafarpoor, A., & Birjandi, P. (1994). Language skills testing: From theory to practice. Tehran: Center Studying and Compiling University Books in Humanities, SAMT.
Goodman, K. S. (1967). Reading: A psycholinguistic guessing game. Literacy Research and Instruction, 6(4), 126-135.
Grabe, W. (2009). Reading in a second language: Moving from theory to practice. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Haenggi, D., Gernsbacher, M. A., & Bolliger, C. M. (1994). Individual differences in situation-based inferencing during narrative text comprehension. Advances in Discourse Processes, 53, 79-96.
Huang, S. (2005). Assessing the relationship between referential understanding and academic reading comprehension among EFL college students (Unpublished master thesis, National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Taiwan).
Hudson, T. (2007). Teaching second language reading. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hymes, D. (1967). Models of the interaction of language and social setting. Journal of Social Issues, 23(2), 8-28.
Hymes, D. (1972). On communicative competence. In Sociolinguistics (pp. 269-293). Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Ikeda, M., & Takeuchi, O. (2006). Clarifying the differences in learning EFL reading strategies: An analysis of portfolios. System, 34, 384-398.
Kaivanpanah, S., & Alavi, S. M. (2008). The role of linguistic knowledge in word-meaning inferencing. System, 36(2), 172-195.
Karbalaei, A. (2010). A comparison of the global reading strategies used by EFL and ESL readers. The Reading Matrix, 10(2), 165-180.
Kennison, S. M. (2003). Comprehending the pronouns her, him, and his: Implications for theories of referential processing. Journal of Memory and Language, 49(3), 335-352.
Kobayashi, K. (2010). Strategic use of multiple texts for the evaluation of arguments. Reading Psychology, 31, 121-149.
Koda, K. (2005). Insights into second language reading: A cross-linguistic approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lee, K. R. (2007). Strategy awareness-raising for success: Reading strategy instruction in the EFL context (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park).
Levine, A., Ferenz, O., & Reves, T. (2000). EFL academic reading and modern technology: How can we turn our students into independent critical readers. TESL-EJ, 4(4), 1-9.
Li, F. (2010). A study of English reading strategies used by senior middle school students. Asian Social Science, 6(10), 184-192.
Maleki, A., & Zangani, E. (2007). A survey on the relationship between English language proficiency and the academic achievement of Iranian EFL students. Asian EFL Journal, 9(1), 86-96.
Mason, L., Scirica, F., & Salvi, L. (2006). Effects of beliefs about meaning construction and task instructions on interpretation of narrative text. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 31, 411-437.
McNeil, L. (2011). Investigating the contributions of background knowledge and reading comprehension strategies to L2 reading comprehension: An exploratory study. Reading and Writing, 24, 883-902.
Munby, J. (1978). Communicative syllabus design: A sociolinguistic model for defining the content of purpose-specific language programmers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nuttall, C. (2005). Teaching reading skills in a foreign language (2nd ed.). Oxford: Macmillan.
Oakhill, J. (1993). Children’s difficulties in reading comprehension. Educational Psychology Review, 5(3), 223-237.
Oczkus, L. D. (2003). Reciprocal teaching at work strategies for improving reading comprehension. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Oxford, R. L. (2003). Language learning styles and strategies: Concepts and relationships. Iral, 41(4), 271-278.
Paris, S. G., Lipson, M. Y., & Wixson, K. K. (1983). Becoming a strategic reader. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8(3), 293-316.
Pearson, P. D., Hiebert, E. H., & Kamil, M. L. (2007). Vocabulary assessment: What we know and what we need to learn. Reading Research Quarterly, 42(2), 282-296.
Poole, A. (2005). Gender differences in reading strategy use among ESL college students. Journal of College Reading and Learning, 36(1), 7-20.
Pretorius, E. J. (2005). English as a second language learner differences in anaphoric resolution: Reading to learn in the academic context. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26(4), 521-539.
Rose, E. (2011). The phenomenology of on-screen reading: University students’ lived experience of digitised text. British Journal of Educational Technology, 42(3), 515-526.
Rupp, A. A., Ferne, T., & Choi, H. (2006). How assessing reading comprehension with multiple-choice questions shapes the construct: A cognitive processing perspective. Language testing, 23(4), 441-474.
Serafini, F. (2004). Lessons in comprehension: Explicit instruction in the reading workshop. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Sweet, A. P., & Snow, C. E. (2003). Rethinking reading comprehension. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Van Wyk, A. L. (2001). The development and implementation of an English language and literature programme for low-proficiency tertiary learners. Publisher not identified.
Wolf, F., Gibson, E., & Desmet, T. (2004). Discourse coherence and pronoun resolution. Language and Cognitive Processes, 19(6), 665-675.
Wood, E., Motz, M., & Willoughby, T. (1998). Examining students’ retrospective memories of strategy development. Journal of educational psychology, 90(4), 698.
Zhang, L. J., & Anual, S. B. (2008). The role of vocabulary in reading comprehension: The case of secondary school students learning English in Singapore. RELC Journal, 39(1), 51-76.
Zhang, L. J., & Wu, A. (2009). Chinese senior high school EFL students’ metacognitive awareness and reading-strategy use. Reading in a Foreign Language, 21(1), 37-59.
Zwaan, R. A., & Brown, C. M. (1996). The influence of language proficiency and comprehension skill on situation-model construction. Discourse Processes, 21(3), 289-327.