وبلاگ

 

 

مطالعه ی کنونی به بررسی تاثیر آموزش راهبردهای CSR بر روی مهارت خواندن زبان آموزان ایرانی با سطح توانش متوسط از زبان انگلیسی می پردازد. به منظور دستیابی به این هدف و پس از برگزاری آزمون استاندارد PET ،64 زبان آموز دختر با دامنه ی سنی 18- 26 و با سطح دانش همسان برای این تحقیق انتخاب شده در دو گروه آزمایشی و ملاک قرار داده شدند و در مرحله ی بعد کلیه افراد در یک پیش آزمون خواندن جهت سنجش مهارت خواندن شرکت کردند. در طول دوره ی آموزشی که 20 جلسه به طول انجامید مطالب یکسانی تدریس شد. تنها تفاوت در این بود که به زبان آموزان در گروه آزمایشی، راهبردهای CSR مرتبط با مهارت خواندن طبق مدل Klingner, Vaughn, & Schumm, (2001)” ” آموزش داده شد، در حالیکه گروه ملاک برنامه ی آموزشی معمول در آموزشگاه زبان سفیر را دریافت کردند. در پایان دوره ی آموزشی یک پس آزمون خواندن از زبان آموزان در هر دوگروه گرفته شد. تحلیل و بررسی نمرات به دست آمده نشان داد که که از لحاظ آماری گروه آزمایشی نتایج بهتری را کسب نمودند. این بدین معناست که تدریس راهبردهای CSR  مفید واقع شده و بهتر است که در برنامه های آموزشی مهارت خواندن گنجانده شود و معلمان نیز آموزش های لازم را جهت استفاده زبان آموزان از این راهبردها را برای آنها فراهم آورند و آنها را پیرامون اهمیت و تاثیر این راهبردها آگاهی دهند. نتیجه ی این تحقیق میتواند برای معلمان زبان انگلیسی در خصوص تدریس راهبردهای CSR در دوره های تدریس مهارت خواندن مفید واقع گردد.

 

Abstract

 

 

 

The present study is an attempt to investigate the effect of teaching “Collaborative Strategic Reading Approach (CSR)” on the reading comprehension of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. To fulfill this objective, a group of 85 female learners attending English courses at Safir Language School took a sample PET as a proficiency test, 64 of them were selected as homogenous learners and were divided into two groups of experimental and control. In the next step, a piloted pretest of reading was administered in both groups. All classes of the two groups were instructed by the same teacher (the researcher) using the same material. The only difference was that the experimental group received CSR strategy training based on Klingner, Vaughn, & Schumm, (2001) model, while the control group received a common teaching program of Safir Language School which is not concerned with teaching strategies.  At the end of the training, a piloted post-test of reading comprehension (was administered to both groups. The analysis of the test scores using t-test revealed that experimental group did statistically better in their post-test, which means that an increase in students’ performance in reading comprehension due to the effect of CSR approach was occurred. The implication is that CSR strategy training can be included in regular English reading courses. This result may help EFL teachers to bear in mind the beneficial of teaching strategies especially when dealing with reading comprehension.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

	IV

 

 

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

V

 

 

VI

 

CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION AND PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS..109

 

 

 

 

 

 

	VII

 

 

LIST OF TABLES

 

 

 

Table 4.18:  Pearson Correlation PET with Pretest and Post-test of Reading Comprehension…107

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

	VIII

 

 

LIST OF FIGURES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

	IX

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER I

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

1.1 Introduction

 

 

 

Reading is an inseparable part of daily life and the most necessary skill for it. It is a process involving the activation of relevant knowledge and related language skills to accomplish an exchange of information from one person to another. It requires the reader to focus his/her attention on the reading materials and integrate previously acquired knowledge and skill to comprehend what someone else has written (Chastain, 1988, p. 216).

 

Reading is a receptive skill, similar to listening, during which readers decode the message of the writer and try to recreate it anew (Rashtchi & Keyvanfar, 2010, P. 141). In fact, reading can be seen as a dialogue between the reader and the text or between the reader and the author. During this active involvement, the reader tries to either construct their personal interpretation of the text or get at the author’s original intention.

 

What has to be noted is that in real life, reading does not happen in a vacuum. It is always done within a social context for a specific reason. We might read to get information on how to do something such as reading a manual, or to learn something like studying our course books. We sometimes read in order to socialize with our friends like reading their email or read in order to organize our daily life matters such as finding the shortest route to a certain destination. Many times we find ourselves reading for pleasure such as reading a novel or browsing the internet. In some situations, we may read for a combination of reasons.

 

Reading comprehension as the “essence of reading” (Durkin, 1993, P. 4) occurs when a mental concept of meaning is created from the written text. To do this, “The reader extracts and integrates various kinds of information from the text and combines it with what is already known” (Koda, 2005, P. 4).

 

Effective reading is not something that every individual learns to do (Nunan, 1999, P. 249). Learning to reading is difficult especially for those reading in a second or foreign language (Celce-Murcia, 1979). Since reading is one of the most complex cognitive processes, there are a number of skills that contribute to fluent reading comprehension, and it is especially so in the context of L2 reading (Sepp & Morvay, 2010, p. 9). However, the widespread attention to reading predominantly focuses on early reading instruction, such as phonological awareness, decoding, and word

 identification instruction (Burns, Griffin, Kuldanek & Snow 1998).

 

To improve learners’ reading abilities, effective strategies, skills and assistant tools should be carefully considered (Oxford, 1990). The concept of strategy is defined by a number of scholars. Strategies are specific actions, behaviors, steps, or techniques that students (often intentionally) use to improve their progress in developing L2 skills (Oxford, 1990). These strategies can facilitate the internalization, storage, retrieval, or use of the new language. They are tools for the self-directed involvement necessary for developing language skills (Oxford, 1990). Many attempts have been done in order to determine and identify strategies especially influencing in the complex process of reading comprehension. In particular, many researchers have been interested in understanding what good readers typically do or posses while they read (e.g., Block, 1992; Brantmeier, 2002; Burns, Roe, & Ross, 1999; Erten & Topkaya, 2009; Heidari, 2010; Lehr, Osborn, & Hiebert, 2005; Kondo-Brown, 2006).

 

Interest in reading strategies among ESL/ EFL practitioners to conduct research began in the late 1960s and early 1970s along with various fields such as psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, and education. Common to most of these streams was a desire to account for differences between “good” and “poor” readers and compare the types of strategies the former group employed which contributed to their successes and distinction.

 

Singhal (2001) emphasizes the crucial role of reading strategies by stating that, “They are of interest for what they reveal about the way readers manage their interactions with written text, and how these strategies are related to reading comprehension” (p. 78).

 

Despite using the related strategies in reading, the results of reading from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed that many students are still not able to read fluently. There are some reasons behind low reading scores such as lack of phonological awareness, phonics-related skills, not being familiar with and using proper reading strategies fully. It seems that these points were overlooked in most approaches related to teaching reading (Standish, 2005).

 

As mentioned before, reading is a complex process. So, it seems that using one or two strategies alone is not sufficient for being an effective reader therefore, according to Standish (2005), what is needed is a specific approach consisting of the combination of different strategies that improve reading comprehension. This approach is called “Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR)”.

 

Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) is proposed by three researchers Klingner, Vaughn, and Schumm in 2001. According to Klingner, Vaughn, and Schumm (as cited in Standish, 2005), CSR was designed to address three important issues in reading instruction. The first, was meeting the needs of the increasingly diverse classrooms in the United States, including English-language learners. Second, CSR provided strategy instruction that increased the students’ comprehension of text and their ability to retain and transfer their new knowledge. Third, CSR was designed to facilitate collaborative, peer-mediated instruction among students in the content area classroom.

 

It is an assembly of strategies that have been proven through research, to be associated with improved outcomes in reading comprehension. CSR integrates word identification, reciprocal reading, and cooperative learning. Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) is a set of four strategies which struggling readers can use to decode and comprehend as they read content area text as follows:

 

 

 

1. Preview: Before reading, students brainstorm prior knowledge and predict what will be learned.

 

1. Click and Clunk: Students identify words and word parts that were hard to understand (called “Clunks”). A sequence of “fix-up” is used to decode the “Clunk”. These strategies are: (a) Re-reading the sentence for key ideas; (b) Looking for context clues in the sentences before and after; © Looking for prefixes or suffixes; and (d) Breaking the word apart to find smaller words.

 

1. Get the Gist: Students learn to ask themselves: what is the most important person, place, or thing? What is the most important idea about the person, place or thing?

 

1. Wrap Up: After reading, students construct their own questions to check for understanding of the passage, answer the questions, and summarize what has been learned.

According to Klingner, Vaughn, and Schumm (as cited in Standish, 2005):

 

These four strategies are the most effective ones, based on the results of researches that have been conducted over 25 years, with numerous investigators. What we’ve done with collaborative strategic reading is taken these four strategies, organized them in a way that has made sense to teachers and has been something that has been productive for them to use with their students. (p. 39)

 

It is believed that CSR makes use of social interactions to increase students’ ability. While students read a new text, they are interested in finding out the existing differences between this current knowledge and existing experiences they have already acquired.

 

In implementing CSR, students work in small, cooperative groups of 4-5 students. They support each other in applying a sequence of reading strategies as they read orally or silently from a shared selection of text.

 

Drawing attention to such strategies gives the learners clear and concrete routines that help them to move beyond concentrating on decoding processes and/or to facilitate transferring those things while reading for meaning in their first language (L1). Therefore, it seems to be of high value to pay more attention to the way CSR can facilitate and exert influence over the processes of reading comprehension and creating language competence through reading among EFL learners.

 

 

 

 

 

• Statement of the Problem

 

 

In learning a foreign language, reading is an essential skill to acquire knowledge and exchange information (Chien, 2000; Dlugosz, 2000; Salinger, 2003; Huang, 2005). For the past two decades, awareness of the importance of reading has been steadily growing and consequent demands for effective reading instruction have increased (Burns, Griffin, & Snow, 1998; US National Reading Panel, 2000).

 

Learning to read is difficult, especially for those reading in a second or foreign language (Celce-Murcia, 1979). Effective reading is not something that every individual learns to do (Nunan, 1999, p. 249). To improve learners’ reading abilities, effective strategies and assistant tools should be carefully considered, but the instructors seldom teach learners how to use learning strategies effectively to improve their reading comprehension; consequently, learners cannot master this language skill effectively (Berkowitz 1986; Carnine and Carnine 2004; Chi, 1997; Griffiths, 2008; Rivard and Yore 1992; Tsao, 2004).