Browsing by Subject "Reading Comprehension."
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Item Open Access An experimental study of cloze and retelling for measuring reading comprehension of EFL students(1991) Sütçü, AyselReading comprehension has traditionally been measured by multiple-choice tests. This study was done to find out whether it is possible to supplement this familiar and most popular reading comprehension test technique with other varieties. The effectiveness of the cloze procedure and retelling as measures of reading comprehension is investigated in this study. A correlational analysis between these two types of tests and two external criteria, teachers' rating of students' reading comprehension abilities and the results of the BUSEL reading test, was carried out to determine to what extent these two measures correlated with the two outside criteria and revealed students' reading comprehension abilities. The findings showed that students' performance on each measure differed from one another. The results obtained on the cloze task and the retelling procedure showed a low correlation with each other and with the two external criteria implying that each test is unique in what it measures and there is no significant similarity in the ability they indicate. Since the low correlations do not help us to arrive at solid conclusions about whether all the three tests measure the same ability, it is not possible to say that one testing technique can replace the other. Further research should be done to find out the effectiveness of these measures by taking into consideration students' learning and test taking strategies, their needs and goals.Item Open Access An experimental study of the effect of prior knowledge on reading comprehension of EFL students(1992) Elmas, BelginThe uee of prior knowledge while reading in the first language has been a primary focus for second languase researchers and educators. It is claimed that if a learner can build a bridge between what he already knows about the world and what is presented in the passage comprciiensiovn will be archieved. According to Carrel and Eisterhoid (1987), this use of prior knowledge lias been formalized as "schema theory". Schema theory explains that ci text does not carry moaning by itself, it only provides directions as to how readers sliould retrieve meaning from their pri.ir knowledge- Miuiy studies have been conducted on the effect of prior knowledge. However, almost all of these studies are carried out in ESL settings. This i'.tudy aims at providing insight into EFL learners use of their prior knowledge to comprehend information from a passage written in a foreign language. The main question investigated in this stuviy was whether a itivating EFL readers' prior knowledge by a pre-reading activity affects their recall of a text and whether this activation has an effect over a longer period of time. To acquire an answer to this question, 20 native Turkish subjects from Bilkent University in Ankiira were chosen and divided into an experimental and a control gr-oup. Both groups took a pro test which measured theii prior knowledge about a topic. Then, the experimental group subjects were provided with a pre reading activity. An Anticipation the findings concluded that there was no relationship between EFL subjects' prior knowledge and their comprehension of a text. Therefore, activating prior knowledge did not significantly increase subjects' retelling of the text. These conclusions contradict the findings of past studies on the effect of prior knowledge on reading comprehension. However, according to one of the latest studies on bilingual readers' use of background knowledge in learning from a text. Roller and Matambo (1992) found that bilingual readers used prior knowledge to improve comprehension of some passages, but not others. Characteristics of passages seemed to override the influence of prior knowledge. This selective use of prior knowledge has important implications for future research on prior knowledge and the EFL reader. It is difficult to make generalizations with the findings of the current research because of its limitations. Nevertheless, the conclusions of the experiment should be of interest to EFL teachers, teacher trainers and curriculum developers.Item Open Access Item Open Access A suggested syllabus model for a course in developing reading skills with special reference to the ELT Department at Gazi University(1991) Tikence, MevlütThe focus of this study is the development of a model syllabus for an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) reading course taught to first year students of the Gazi University ELT Department. First, the general background of ESP, problems of the reading course at Gazi and the limitations of the study are presented. After a review of teaching ESP, approaches to general and ESP syllabus design, and models of communicative syllabuses, the data collection instruments, a questionnaire and an interview, are explained. The questionnaire was given to a sample of the third and fourth year students enrolled in the B.A. in the EFL teacher education program in the Gazi ELT Department. The interview was conducted with professors from., the department who teach English-medium content courses, such as linguistics, methodology, literature and translation. Both instruments had the same questions enabling the researcher to compare the answers of the two groups of respondents. The data obtained reveal that students and teachers have similar attitudes about the necessity and difficulty of reading skills. The interview results also reveal the lack of a clearly articulated set of goals and objectives based on students' actual needs and of a syllabus for this first year ESP reading course. Based on the review of literature and the data obtained in this study, a syllabus model, which incorporates students actual language requirements, and specific goals and objectives are presented. Finally, pedagogical implications of the prepared syllabus model and suggestions for further research are discussed.