Effects of Pre-Reading Activities on EFL Reading Comprehension by Moroccan 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 Moroccan 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. Key words: Pre-reading activities; Activating background knowledge; Reading comprehension