The Effect of On-line Cumulative Syntactic Analysis (CSA) System on EFL Reading Comprehension

• Main Authors: Ya-Huei Shiu, 許雅惠
• Other Authors: Yea-Ru Tsai
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/34679697863984611810

碩士 === 義守大學 === 應用英語學系碩士班 === 99 === Reading is the main ability to learn, understand and solve problems. Few people would deny the importance of reading comprehension in this knowledge-driven society. However, many EFL learners still encounter reading difficulties while reading articles in their daily lives. In order to help learners to overcome their reading difficulties, the present study focuses an on-line Cumulative Syntactic Analysis (CSA) strategy instruction to investigate students’ perceptions on reading comprehension. Two questions were proposed to be explored: (1) What is the effect of the on-line Cumulative Syntactic Analysis (CSA) strategy instruction on EFL learners’ reading comprehension? (2) What is the relationship between syntactic analysis ability and reading comprehension of EFL learners? The comparison of the pretest showed no difference between the experimental group and the control group before the reading course. Nevertheless, after the reading course, there was a significant difference between the experimental group and the control group in the posttest. Especially the experimental group got a highly significant difference between the pretest and the posttest. Moreover, the results revealed that the total score and the scores of the six steps and seven patterns in the CSA test both correlated significantly. Therefore, the results demonstrated that students can improve their reading comprehension via receiving the CSA strategy instruction to enhance the ability of syntactic analysis during the reading process. Pedagogical implications are briefly presented to provide useful information for the design of the reading strategy instruction.