Abstract
For engineering students, reading in English is the core competence to absorb professional knowledge in academic settings and their future career, because many authentic textbooks and information about advanced technology have been published in English. The present study sets out to improve English reading comprehension among tertiary-level engineering students. An online reading strategy instruction based on cumulative sentence analysis (CSA) was constructed to enhance the students’ reading comprehension of English technology texts. The comparison between the pre-test and post-test showed that the participants achieved a higher level of reading comprehension performance following the instruction. The findings clearly demonstrated that online CSA strategy instruction is an efficient and feasible approach to helping engineering students cope with their problems of reading English texts. Pedagogical implications are briefly discussed based on the findings of this study.
Highlights
According to the vision set by the Ministry of Education (MoE) of Taiwan, it has been generally recognized that the primary goal of foreign language education is to train the students with foreign language proficiency and professional knowledge needed for their future career (Tsai, 2011)
English reading comprehension ability is crucial in academic settings and their future career
The highly significant difference of the participants between the pre-test and the post-test indicates that students had made a considerable progress after the online cumulative sentence analysis (CSA) strategy instruction
Summary
According to the vision set by the Ministry of Education (MoE) of Taiwan, it has been generally recognized that the primary goal of foreign language education is to train the students with foreign language proficiency and professional knowledge needed for their future career (Tsai, 2011). Several researchers have emphasized the importance of English in engineering education (Pritchard & Nasr, 2004; Venkatraman & Premak, 2007). It was pointed out that English is the major international language of science community, which enables the students to acquire professional knowledge through reading texts in English (Pritchard & Nasr, 2004). Some authors stressed that engineering students should be equipped with specific English skills, which will become valuable resources in their career (Joesba & Ardeo, 2005). English reading comprehension ability is crucial in academic settings and their future career. To absorb fundamental knowledge in textbooks and deepen professional knowledge in their workplace, it is essential for engineering students to read in English fluently
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