Abstract
This study sought to explore the power of self-generated drawing to improve reading comprehension of English language learners in a university setting. Fourteen undergraduate students, divided into control and experimental groups, read a chapter from a graded reader. The experimental group was instructed to construct self-generated drawings as they read to help them with comprehension while the control group only read. The students in both groups were given a pretest to determine their familiarity with the story, a posttest to measure reading comprehension, and were asked to write a short summary of the story to determine their reading comprehension. To learn about future use of the strategy, the students in both groups were asked to complete a self-perception survey. The study revealed mixed results: while the learners that drew while reading showed better reading comprehension when writing a summary, when assessed on a reading comprehension test, those who only read did slightly better. These results cannot be compared to studies involving language learners because of the absence of such studies, but experiments carried out in other disciplines with content area learners showed that learners benefit from drawing as they study. The use of self-generated drawings to support reading comprehension or other aspects of language learning shows promise at the theoretical and practical level. Considering the results reported in this study, more research needs to be done to show the benefits of self-generated drawings for English language learners.
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