LANGUAGE IN INDIA

The Effect of Reading Strategy Training on University ESL
Learners' Reading Comprehension

Alireza Karbalaei, Ph.D. Candidate
K.S. Rajyashree, Ph.D.

Abstract

The current research examined the effects of note-taking instruction on reading comprehension of college students at undergraduate level. A sample of 63 students majoring English, aged 17-25 (32 males, 31 females), were selected from among students of four classes in three different colleges in Mysore, India. They received 9 weeks of instruction and practice by Cornell method of note-taking. The effects of the note-taking instruction were measured by their performance on two multiple-choice reading comprehension texts. Students' performance on a proficiency test was used to group students into two levels (high vs. low) and functioned as another independent variable in analysis in addition to gender as another variable in this study.

Results indicated significant treatment effect in favor of the strategy of note-taking instruction on both high and low groups. There was no statistically significant difference between low and high groups after instruction, although such a difference existed between two groups before instruction.

The results suggest that students at college can be instructed to develop note-taking ability that promotes their learning without taking gender factor into account because there was no significant difference between males and females in this study.

Key words: reading strategies, note-taking strategies, reading comprehension

Introduction

In the age of globalization, reading in a second language or foreign language (L2) contexts continues to attract an increasing attention. Therefore, the acquisition of different reading skills including note-taking is a priority for millions of learners around the world. However, as Grabe (2002) points out, due to the complexity inherent in the reading process, reading is also a skill that is accounted as one of the most difficult to develop to a high level of proficiency. Another problem which should be pointed out is that many enter higher education unprepared for the reading demands that are placed upon them as Dreyer and Nel (2003) point out.

Interest in reading skills or strategies, among EFL, ESL, and other second / foreign language practitioners, grew out of several streams of research which began in the late 1960s and early 1970s in different fields including psycholinguists, cognitive psychology and education. One of the streams of research which gave rise to interest in reading strategies focused on investigations in the field of psychology and education. Dickson, Collins, Simmons, and Kameenui (1998) describe strategies as "actions selected deliberately to achieve particular goals" (p.304). More specifically, O'Malley, Chamot, Stewner-Manzanares, Russo (1985) define strategies as "operations or steps used by a learner to facilitate the acquisition, storage, or retrieval of information" (p.557).

Strong Connection Between Reading and Writing

In addition, the strong connections between reading and writing are irrefutable. As Nuttach (1996) expresses, reading and writing are so closely associated as two sides of the same coin that it is natural for work on either to support work on the other. To date, a lot of studies have been done regarding the relationship existing between reading and writing. These studies can be divided into three main categories including those that examine the effect of reading on writing (e.g. Hirvela, 2004; Liv, 2000), those that scrutinize correlations between reading and writing (Eisterhold, 1990; Kennedy,1994; Olson, 2003) , and those which examine different aspects on the reading-writing relationship or explain its theoretical bases ( Carson, 2004; Jabbour,2001; Smagorinsky, et al., 2005).

Usefulness and Effectiveness of Teaching Skills Together

What has been drawn as conclusion from the early 1990's research toward 2000's is that when these skills are taught together, they involve students in a greater use and variety of cognitive strategies in comparison to when they are taught individually; Furthermore, making use of writing as a learning strategy results in better reading achievement, on one hand, and using reading as a tool for manifesting ideas leads to better writing performance, on the other hand.

Teaching reading skills has been a mainstay of many if not most academically focused adult-level ESL reading classroom for at least the last two decades. In most recent years, skilled-based instruction has become increasingly popular in higher-level English as a second language ( ESL) and foreign language (EFL). While in a general sense, reading skills may refer to a variety of things including word recognition and other so-called "bottom-up" decoding skills, beyond the beginning level the focus tends to have been on "top-down" or meaning-based strategies that proficient readers have recognized as important to employ them in different second language studies.

Some Important Strategies

Among these top-down strategies, we can consider note-taking, skimming, scanning, using contextual and other clues to guess the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary, to name just a few. The focus such tactics or strategies have received in English classrooms reveals this belief that they have the potential to improve reading comprehension by giving learners clear routines that help them to move beyond centering on decoding process and to facilitate transfer of those things that they may do when reading for meaning in their first language (L1).

Impact of Writing on Reading

Regarding the impact of writing on reading, Langer and Applebee (1987) indicate two kinds of writing tasks which help to develop and shape the readers' ideas. The first kind of these tasks compromises note-taking, short-answer questions, and summary writing.

For most students, whether in high school or college levels, taking notes is necessary for optimal test performance while listening to a lecture or reading a text. Over 30 years ago, DiVesta and Gray (1972) reached to this conclusion that note-taking serves two functions: encoding and external storage (Kiewra, 1989).

Encoding and Note-Taking

Some other researchers have sought to reveal the existence of encoding during note-taking (Benton, Kiewra, Whitfill, & Dennison, 1993; Hartley & Davies, 1978; Putten & Coppola, 1998; Rickards & Friedman, 1978), because comprehension of the material would be increased if encoding occurs (Budd & Alexander,1997). Note-taking is an effective strategy to increase students' recall, comprehension, and retention of subject matter (Czarnecki et al., 1994; Kneale, 1998; Spires & Stone, 1989).

As a whole, students are able to comprehend better when they take notes, as compared with those who do not, because note-taking necessitates that students attend to the information selectively, and that activity contribute to encoding.

Functions of Note-Taking

Both note-taking functions put emphasis on the selective attentive nature of note-taking. In other words, notes simply direct students to pay more attention to important details and less to particular details presented in lectures or textbooks.

In addition, as Armbruster (2000) points out, the act of note-taking has been interpreted as a constructivist activity in its own right. In constructing knowledge, a student must decide to attend to the text at hand, decide on what is important to note and what is not, and then make connections among the concepts in the reading text and between these concepts and prior knowledge. From this point of view, note-taking can be taken into account as a generative activity which is closely related to conceptions of knowledge-construction activities. Add to it, she also proposed that the more generative the note-taking activity is, the more that learning or comprehending is likely to occur.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Identities Reflected in the Discourses of Male speakers - A Malaysian Chinese Perspective | Phonological Processes in English Speaking Indian Children | Communication Apprehensions in English Language Classrooms in Schools in Pakistan | Language Use and Society in R. K. Narayan's The Man-eater of Malgudi | A Comparative and Contrastive Study of Preposition in Arabic and English | An Insight into Pratibha Ray's Women Characters in 'The Stigma' and 'The Blanket' | Islamic Terms in English Usage | Love is More Than Language - Feminine Sensibility in the Works of Lakshmi Kannan | The Effect of Reading Strategy Training on University ESL Learners' Reading Comprehension | A Socio-Semantic Study of 'Can' and 'Could' as Modal Auxiliaries in English | Teaching and Learning Language Through Distance Education - Kannada for Administrators: A Case Study | HOME PAGE of July 2009 Issue | HOME PAGE | CONTACT EDITOR