Abstract
The current study examined differential effects of two pre-modification types, syntactic elaboration and syntactic simplification (at the level of syntax and irrespective of problematic lexis), on EST students’ reading comprehension. The purpose was to see whether a priori syntactic elaborative adjustment, given its advantages over simplification, can augment comprehensibility of scientific texts in order to replace simplification adjustment. To carry out the study, three versions of 5 passages including Baseline, syntactically simplified, and syntactically elaborated were provided. All the five passages were relevant to civil engineering and they were modified using two above-mentioned techniques. The subjects of the study were composed of 185 homogenous civil engineering students who participated in different phases. The results revealed that syntactic simplification and syntactic elaboration procedures operated nearly in the same way in orienting the EST texts toward comprehensibility. The results of the study even indicated that students benefited more from elaborated than simplified texts although it was not statistically significant. Therefore, the study supports the view that syntactic elaborative adjustment can be exercised in advance on EST materials for pedagogical purposes since it increases the reading comprehension at the same time keeps unfamiliar syntactic units intact to be learned by EST readers
Highlights
The significance of English as a medium of general communication across the nations is completely evident
Beasley (1990) maintained that acquiring the ability to read academic texts is of paramount importance for the university students of English as a second language and as a foreign language
It is concluded that students perform significantly better in elaborated version of the reading comprehension texts compared with the original version
Summary
The significance of English as a medium of general communication across the nations is completely evident. The question posed here is whether treatment of the complex syntactic items of the original written texts in scientific areas can help less-proficient ESP/EST students cope with syntactically triggered reading comprehension problems. With the tension between the requirements of the comprehensible input for language acquisition and preservation of the authenticity of the text we may have to reconcile these two by using the technique of elaborative modification which would acquaint ESP/EST readers with authentic characteristics of the text and simultaneously equip them with the necessary skills for coping with complex items in authentic texts. Is there any significant difference between the performance of EST students on baseline version and syntactically simplified (linguistically adjusted at syntactical stage) version of reading comprehension texts?. Is there any significant difference between the performance of EST students on linguistically adjusted version and syntactically elaborated version of the texts?
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
