Awareness of Referential Devices in Text and Reading Comprehension

Awareness of Referential Devices in Text and Reading Comprehension

Ebrahimpourtaher, Adel

Hassan‘s (1976) classification of these devices as personal, comparative, and demonstrative on the reading ability of the present study explored the role of learners‘ awareness of referential devices in texts based on Halliday and learners. To support this, 30 male students aged between 13 and 20 were selected out of 180 students studying English at Iran Language Institute.All the subjects were elementary 3 students and were chosen considering their final reading scores they got in elementary 2 to make the sample almost homogeneous. They were randomly divided into two groups of 15 subjects. Through a 20-session term,10 passages were taught to both experimental and control groups through a similar methodology for teaching reading at this Institute. The only difference was that we made our experimental group practice finding referents. We helped them through oral questions, group work, and also taught them specific strategies taken from TOEFL FLASH SERIES .The subjects in the control group only received the method common in the Institute. We gave them a post-test on the last session. This was a multiple-choice reading test including two short passages each followed by 5 questions. A t-test was taken to compare the mean scores of the groups. The results confirmed the hypothesis and showed a significant improvement on the reading ability of subjects in the experimental group. In the end, some pedagogical implications were made.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2011-05

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