The Influence Of Interventions On Reading Comprehension In A Second And Foreign Language

Reading comprehension is one of the crucial skills for the students enrolled or planning to enroll in language learning courses at North American universities. In order to be able to read academic texts, the students need to develop strong comprehension skills. The present study plays an important role in the field of second/foreign language (L2/FL) acquisition due to its attempt to investigate those classroom practices that can foster reading comprehension among international students learning English as a second language and American students learning German as a foreign language. The present study analyzes the influence of two interventions on reading comprehension of L2/FL college-level students. While some research described the positive effect of vocabulary knowledge (Anderson and Freebody, 1984; Laufer, 1997, Carlo et al., 2004) and prior acquisition of information (Palincsar and Brown, 1984; Anderson, 1999, Mehrpour and Rahimi, 2010) on students' performance on reading comprehension tasks, there is not enough research in the body of knowledge involving both ESL and German as a foreign language learners. This work draws on a quantitative study of three groups presented with three articles and a series of post-reading tasks. The data for this study stem from the tests that each group completed within a period of three weeks. The present study allows the researcher to gain more insights into the complexity of reading comprehension process of L2/FL learners, and the results of this research can be beneficial for instructors working with L2/FL college-level learners.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A. in Modern Languages

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Modern Languages

Year dc:date.available

2015

Author dc:creator

• Velezheva, Anna

Contributors dc:contributor

• Tamara Warhol
• Larisa Warhol
• Corina Petrescu

• Foreign Language
• Reading Comprehension
• Reading Skills
• Second Language
• First and Second Language Acquisition

Repository record dc:identifier

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/902

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:egrove.olemiss.edu:etd-1901