The Effect of User-Friendly Texts vs. Impersonal and Hybrid Texts on the Reading Comprehension Ability of Iranian EFL Learners
الموضوعات :اسماعیل فقیه 1 , نعبمه خرقانی 2
1 - Alzahra University, Tehran
2 - Islamic Azad University - Mashhad and Qouchan Branch
الکلمات المفتاحية: User-Friendly Texts, Impersonal Texts, Hybrid Texts,
ملخص المقالة :
This study focuses on the effect of user-friendly, impersonal, and hybrid texts on the reading comprehension ability of Iranian foreign language learners. Forty-five students of AlzahraUniversity were selected on the basis of their performance in a recent TOEFL. They were given three different texts (each group of 15 students was given one type) describing the same area of English usage, which were all followed by a reading comprehension test. Also, a questionnaire containing two questions was given to the participants in order to tap their own personal feelings. Series of one-way ANOVA displayed that the mean differences among the three groups were significant at 0.05 level and the user-friendly group outperformed the other ones.
Amritavalli, R. (1999). Dictionaries are unpredictable. ELT Journal, 53(4), 263-265.
Anderson, R. C. (1977). The notion of schemata and the educational enterprise: General discussion of the conference. In R. C. Anderson, R.J. Spiro & W. E. Montague (Eds.) Schooling and the acquisition of knowledge (pp.415-431). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Bartu, H. (2001). Can't I read without thinking? Reading in a Foreign Language, 13, 593-614.
Berry, R. (2000)."Youser-friendly"metalanguage: what effect does it have on learners of English? IRAL, 38, 195-211.
Bloom, B.S. (Ed.) (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives.The classification of educational goals: Handbook.NewYork: Longamn.
Dryer, M. (1999). Functionalism and the metalanguage: Theory confusion.Retrieved http://linguistics.buffalo.edu/people/faculty August 15, 2005, from the website: /dryer/dryer/metalanguage PDF.
Flower, L. (1979). Writer based prose: A cognitive basis for problems in writing. College English, 41, 19-37.
Gray, C. & Aldred, D. (1998). A principled approach to ESP course design. HKJAL, 3, 77-86.
Grellet, F. (1981). Developing reading skills: A practical guide to reading comprehension exercises. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Howard, Y. (2003). Courseware Developing "learner friendly" Courseware for TESOL: Preliminary Investigation. Teaching English with technology 3(4). Retrieved March 21, 2005 from: http://www.iatefl.org.pl/call/callnl.
Jonathan, k. & Just, M.A. (1991). Individual differences in syntactic processing: The role of working memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 580-602.
Longman complete course for TOEFL test (2004). Harlow: Longman.
Mikulecky, B. (1990). A short course in teaching reading skills. Reading mass: Addison-Wesley.
Nassaji, H. (2002).Schema theory and knowledge-based processes in second language reading comprehension: A need for alternative perspectives. Language Learning,52, 439-481.
Nuttal, C. (1996). Teaching Reading Skills in a foreign Language (2ndEd.). Oxford: Heinemann.
Richards, J. C. & Renandy, W. A. (2002). Methodology in language teaching: An anthology of current practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rumelhart, D. (1980). Schemata: The building blocks of cognition. In R. Spiro, B. Bruce and W. Brewer (Eds.), Theoretical issues in reading comprehension (pp. 33-58). Hillsdale, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Scarella, R. (2003). Academic English: A conceptual framework. The university of California linguistic minority research institute- technical report.
Spiro, R.J. (1979). Etiology of reading comprehension style. In M. L. Kamil & A. J. Moe (Eds.), Reading research: Studies and applications. Clemson, S.C.: National Reading Conference.
Vande Kopple, W. (1985). Some exploratory discourse on metadiscourse. College Composition and Communication, 36, 2-93.
Wallace, C. (2002). Reading. InR. Carter & D. Nunan (Eds.), The Cambridge guide to teaching to speakers of other languages. 21-28. (pp. 21-28). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
