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Makale Özeti:
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Language learning is generally viewed as a quite demanding process. Considering its multi-faceted and intricate nature, there is an ongoing and ever-growing quest for new ways to render the learning period shorter and more effective. In this process, some contributive means such as language learning strategies are offered and employed as boosting and facilitating factors. Having its roots in the studies conducted to identify the common characteristics of successful language learners in 1970s, language learning strategies appear to be effective in terms of different language skills. As reading comprehension skill constitutes one of the most important aspects of competence in a language, language learning strategies promise some facilities in this context, too. There are some strategies applicable for reading comprehension skill in the related literature and most of them aim to render reading process more effective and time-efficient. Strategies like “getting the idea quickly”, “taking notes”, “highlighting”, and “guessing intelligently” covered in this study are all intended to serve this purpose as contributive agents.
Even though it can be easily observed that there is an ever-growing body of research on the use meta-cognitive strategies, cognitive and compensation strategies receive much less interest. In order to fill this gap, this study aims to find out whether teaching cognitive and compensation strategies for reading comprehension skill makes a statistically significant difference in the students’ reading performances.
The subjects of the study are 60 first-year students attending the ELT program at Ondokuz Mayıs University. 30 students are assigned to the experimental group while the other 30 students are included in the control group. In order to specify the extent to which the treatment process is successful a pre- and post-test for reading comprehension were administered to the subjects. In order to evaluate the reading comprehension level of the students, ten multiple-choice questions, two open ended questions and four true-false questions are addressed to them in the test (pre-post test). The statistical analyses of the study are conducted by means of the SPSS software with statistical techniques like mean, standard deviation, frequencies and T-tests. The statistically significance level is accepted as p<0.05 for the analyses and the related discussions and comments are reported in line with this significance threshold.
Unlike the experimental group that receives strategy-based instruction for reading comprehension, the control group receives reading lessons through a traditional approach without any special emphasis on language learning strategies. During the treatment process, which lasts eight weeks (12 lesson hours), the experimental group is trained to use three cognitive strategies and one compensation strategy for reading comprehension skill. Oxford’s extensive taxonomy constituted the basis for the selection of the strategies to be instructed. The employed cognitive strategies are “getting the idea quickly”, “taking notes” and “highlighting” while the only compensation strategy covered in the study is “guessing intelligently”.
Although no statistically significant difference is found between the pre- and post-test scores of the students in the two groups, the within-group independent analysis of the pre- and post-test scores of the students in the experimental group indicates a statistically significant progress. Furthermore, the analysis of the pre- and post-test scores of the students included in the control group shows no statistically significant difference. In the light of these findings, it is concluded that using language learning strategies could be of a contributing effect for enhancing reading comprehension skill; and taking the context, scope, and findings of this study into consideration, the following suggestions are presented for future studies and classroom implementations.
The statistically significant progress achieved by the experimental group indicates that strategy-based language teaching should be incorporated into the methodology followed in language classes, particularly in EFL context. It is an undeniable fact that it is not so simple and smooth to ensure the integration of language learning strategies in EFL classes where traditional understandings are rather hard to break. Some of the preceding problems posing difficulty in this regard are the unwillingness of the students accustomed to the dominance of teacher-talk, hardness to break the classical habits of both teachers and learners, limited time and so on. Nevertheless, through organizing the variables like allocated time, strategy selection, student background and so on at an optimum-like level, teachers can observe considerable progress in their students’ performances. To this end, it is quite important that ELT departments at the university level adopt an inclusive outlook on the use of language learning strategies and thus help the prospective English language teachers hold an adequate awareness about the significance of strategy-based instruction. Likewise, the English language teachers’ awareness in this context should be maximized via well-designed and to-the-point in-service training programs.
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