Effect of Teaching Complex Noun Phrases for Reading Comprehension Purposes in EAP Programs

Complex noun phrases (CNPs), defined as phrases where a noun is the head modified by preceding or following lexical items, are a major vehicle of written academic English. However, CNPs are typically not explicitly addressed in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programs for English language learners (ELLs) for reading purposes even though they present considerable challenges to ELLs in terms of processing and comprehension. This manuscript-based doctoral dissertation reports on a quasi-experimental mixed methods study that aims to investigate whether explicit instruction on the structure of CNPs and the parsing and paraphrasing strategies aimed to help the students expediently and accurately interpret them results in more accurate interpretation of sentences containing them. A two-phase mixed-methods study resulted in three publications in peer-reviewed journals. Phase 1 of the study involved designing and validating a pilot CNP comprehension test and investigating the specific challenges ELLs may have with processing and interpreting various CNPs. The results of both the CNP test and the interviews signal significant CNP parsing and interpretation challenges on the part of EAP students, identify the types of CNPs and the parsing and interpretation tasks that they find especially challenging, and underscore the need for explicit instruction on the structure of CNPs for reading purposes. Phase 2 of this study, published as two peer-reviewed articles, involved design and instruction of four teaching modules to an experimental group of 96 first-year EAP students consisting of several college- and university-based EAP classes, and measurement of their success in parsing and paraphrasing CNP through a pre- and a post-test and exit interviews/verbalization task. A comparable control group was given just the pre- and the post-test. The results of Phase 2 of the study suggest that the teaching intervention had a significant effect on the post-test scores, and that the participants considered the CNP reading strategies a useful enhancement of the academic reading curriculum and were able to apply most of the CNP parsing and interpretation strategies in the strategy verbalization task.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies

Grantor dc:publisher

Carleton University

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Priven, Dmitri

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright © 2024 the author(s). Theses may be used for non-commercial research, educational, or related academic purposes only. Such uses include personal study, distribution to students, research and scholarship. Theses may only be shared by linking to the Carleton University Institutional Repository and no part may be copied without proper attribution to the author; no part may be used for commercial purposes directly or indirectly via a for-profit platform; no adaptation or derivative works are permitted without consent from the copyright owner.

Language dc:language.iso

en

DOI

10.22215/etd/2024-16477

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:carleton.scholaris.ca:20.500.14718/43620