The Effects of the Directed Reading-Thinking Activity on EFL Students' Referential and Inferential Comprehension

Abstract

A study investigated the effects of the Directed Reading Thinking Activity on Egyptian first-year secondary stage EFL students' referential and inferential reading comprehension. The study utilized a pretest-posttest control group experimental design. The subjects consisted of 72 first-year secondary students in Menouf Secondary School for Boys at Menoufya Directorate of Education (Egypt) during the academic year 2005/2006. These subjects were randomly assigned to an experimental group and a control group. Both groups were pretested to measure their referential and inferential reading comprehension before conducting the experiment. During the experiment, the experimental group students were exposed to the DRTA, whereas the control group students were exposed to the conventional method of teaching reading comprehension. The experiment lasted for about five months. After treatment, the two groups were post-tested to investigate any significant differences in their referential and inferential reading comprehension. The obtained data were analyzed using the Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) and the T-test. The findings revealed that there were no significant differences in referential or inferential reading comprehension between the two groups on the pre-test. However, the findings showed that there were statistically significant differences in both referential and inferential reading comprehension on the post-test in favor of the experimental group. These findings show that the development of referential and inferential comprehension skills can only result from using a strategy which forces students to apply these skills while reading. Therefore, the goal of developing reading comprehension should go hand-in-hand with the goal of developing thinking skills. (Contains 4 tables. The Referential/Inferential Reading Comprehension Test is appended.)