The relationship between students’ reading comprehension achievement and their attitudes towards learning English and their abilities to use reading strategies with regard to hemispheric dominance

Abstract

The purpose of the research is to determine the effects of the language curricula designed in compliance with the principles of representational systems on the students’ reading comprehension achievement and their attitudes towards learning English with regard to brain dominance and reading strategies. The population of this study was the 40 students (14 female, 26 male) from a university preparatory class in the Spring Term of the 2008-2009 Academic Year. The research presented in this study was based on a randomized pretest posttest control group design. In this research, a reading strategies scale, a brain dominance inventory, an attitude scale and a vocabulary and reading comprehension test were used. In the analysis of the data, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, percentage, t-test and for the reading comprehension achievement test, KR 20 reliability test were administered. The significance level of the tests was .05. As a result of the research, there was no statistically significant difference between reading comprehension achievements but there was statistically significant difference between the attitudes of the experimental and the control group students in favor of the experimental group both in left and right brain dominant students.