المستخلص: |
The present study sought to investigate the effect of constructivist reading instruction on first year secondary students’ reading comprehension skills in Bisha K.S.A. The study sample comprised forty nine first year secondary students at King Fahd secondary school, who were randomly assigned to either to the control group( N= 24) or the experimental group( N=25).Both groups were pre-post tested using a reading comprehension test prepared by the researcher. Then, the experimental group was taught the course-book ‘English for Saudi Arabia’ supplemented with the constructivist reading instruction whereas the control group was taught the same course-book in the traditional method. Two hypotheses were formulated and tested. A T-test was used in the statistical analysis of the collected data. Results revealed that the constructivist reading instruction is effective in enhancing the reading comprehension skills of the participants of the experimental group. In addition, compared to the traditional instruction, the constructivist reading instruction was more effective in enhancing the participants’ reading comprehension skills. These results substantiate the importance of implementing the constructivist reading instruction in EFL classrooms as it provides a scaffolding learning environment which encourages the participants to interact with their teacher, peers and the text to comprehend what they read. In addition, the constructivist reading instruction enabled the participants to move from lower cognitive processing levels such as memorizing and repeating textual information while reading to higher levels of cognition which helped them to connect the new information with prior knowledge and apply appropriate reading strategies which enhanced their reading comprehension skills.
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