Enhancing EFL Secondary School Students’ Reading Comprehension Through Schema-building Activities

Abstract


Reading is crucial in academic settings as it is connected with knowledge transmission and expansion. However, many EFL learners encounter various reading comprehension problems (e.g. deficits in their background knowledge, difficulties in understanding linguistic complexity and language inaccessibility) that they struggle to overcome. Therefore, this study aimed to enhance Egyptian first year Language Secondary School students’ reading comprehension through schema-building activities. The present study adopted a quasi-experimental design. Two intact classes were selected and randomly assigned to a control and an experimental group, 35 students each. The treatment lasted for three months and the two groups had the same teacher (the current researcher), time, and course book. However, students of the experimental group benefited from schema-building activities before, while and after reading the selected material. To examine the effectiveness of schema-building activities in enhancing the overall reading comprehension and its sub-skills, pre- and post- reading tests were administered to both the control and experimental groups. Then, the t-test for independent samples was used to compare the scores of the experimental and control groups on the posttest of reading comprehension. Results showed that implementing schema-building activities in EFL reading classes had significant effects on students' overall reading comprehension and its sub-skills; literal, inferential and critical skills. In light of these findings, a number of recommendations were suggested for teachers, students and curricula designers.