Effects of Pre-reading Activities on EFL Reading by Iranian College Students

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of two pre-reading activities (class discussion and vocabulary definitions) and a control condition on the reading comprehension of 57 Iranian college freshmen. It also investigated the differential facilitative effect of the two pre-reading activities on the students' comprehension. Each student read an expository text under one of the three conditions and immediately afterwards answered a 9-item short answer test designed to measure comprehension of the text. A one-way ANOVA and a post-hoc comparison test were applied to the results. This revealed that the two pre-reading activities produced significantly higher comprehension scores than the control condition. Vocabulary definitions activity resulted in increased comprehension compared with the control condition, but was significantly less effective than the class discussion activity. Results of the study were interpreted in relation to the schema-theoretic view of the reading process, and to their implications for EFL reading instruction.

A Qualitative Case Study on Reading Practices and Habits of High School Students

“…A large body of studies investigated the effectiveness of various pre-reading activities on developing reading comprehension (e.g. Alemi & Ebadi, 2010: Azizifar, Roshani, Gowhary & Jamalinesari, 2015Faruk & Mahmud, 2014;Moghaddam & Mahmoudi, 2016;Salehi & Abbaszadeh, 2017). These studies, among others, proved that pre-reading activities have a positive impact on learners' reading comprehension.…”

“…These studies, among others, proved that pre-reading activities have a positive impact on learners' reading comprehension. Such activities include pre-reading questions and vocabulary definitions (Azizifar et al, 2015), class discussion and vocabulary definitions (Salehi & Abbaszadeh, 2017), movie-watching, vocabulary presentation, and pre-reading summarization (Moghaddam & Mahmoudi, 2016), pre-reading discussion sessions (Faruk & Mahmud, 2014), and pictorial context, pre-questioning, and vocabulary pre-teaching (Alemi & Ebadi, 2010).…”

Tantangan Guru BIPA Menghadapi Pembelajaran Daring di Masa Pandemi Covid-19

“…Pada tahapan sebelum membaca, siswa dipersiapkan untuk memahami konteks serta beberapa kosakata yang akan mereka temukan dalam teks. Menurut Reza Salehi & Abbaszadeh (2017), kegiatan sebelum membaca dapat menambah pemahaman siswa dalam membaca teks karena mereka telah mendapatkan pemaparan tentang kosakata yang sulit.…”