Abstract
This study is a potential endeavor to make an inquiry into the perceived effect of text typology on reading achievement gains among Moroccan English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. It also evinces whether strategy instruction can be an influencing variable on learners’ reading achievement with regards to text type (i.e., narrative, expository). Indeed, incorporating two primary text genres (i.e., narrative, expository) in the conduct of this current research, the study is intended to substantiate any marked interrelatedness existing between text typology and reading achievement at the pre- and post-testing stages among EFL university learners. For assuring a thorough, rich investigation of this stated postulate, two sampled Moroccan EFL groups (n=113), as first-year English majors, were addressed. The obtained data were collected by means of a corpus of research instruments such as reading comprehension tests (i.e., pre-test, post-test), strategy training and reading comprehension texts (i.e., narrative, expository). The findings showcased that text genre is not a significant, influential variable on reading achievement scores among the control (n=50) and treatment groups (n=63). Finally, the study puts forward some useful implications pertaining to EFL text processing/ analysis and an explicit mention of some limitations, which encountered the undertaken study, is made.
Highlights
Assuming the stark complexity of conducting academic English as a foreign language (EFL) reading at the university level, it is apparent that text processing and analysis, as a cognitive enterprise in the field of academia, entails “high-level” thinking processes (e.g., Rapp & van den Broek, 2005) and flexible strategy usage on the part of EFL learners for comprehension achievement purposes
This is, in a way, in accordance with the claim postulated in the first research hypothesis which states that text type does not have an effect on Moroccan EFL university learners’ reading achievement gains
The extensive instruction of the EFL learners in the deployment of reading “heuristics” can enhance the learners’ capabilities to perform significantly better in both narrative and expository text processing
Summary
Assuming the stark complexity of conducting academic English as a foreign language (EFL) reading at the university level, it is apparent that text processing and analysis, as a cognitive enterprise in the field of academia, entails “high-level” thinking processes (e.g., Rapp & van den Broek, 2005) and flexible strategy usage on the part of EFL learners for comprehension achievement purposes This plainly unveils that learners do engage in the synthesizing process and resort to diverse text-based strategies with a view to making meaningful sense of the textual content regardless of which typology of the discourse that they tend to cope with. Though text type at times dictates more frequent use of some reading strategies than others (Baritta et al, 2009; Yoshida, 2012), the attainment of sufficient, efficient understanding of the written input remains the ultimate goal of any undertaken reading act among EFL learners This is basically underscored by Smith (1982) who argues that reading certainly implies comprehension. Further and extended research, couched within the confines of EFL reading as a basic receptive skill in any academic context, is needed to provide more illustrative, relevant and confirmatory findings that contribute to both the enrichment of EFL reading comprehension research and the plausible understanding of the academic EFL reading act as regards text type, namely narrative and expository
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