درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The present study investigated the effect of practicing domestic vs. foreign newspaper on Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners’ reading comprehension ability. The main question this study tried to answer was whether or not practicing domestic vs. foreign newspaper has any effect on Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners’ reading comprehension ability. To answer this question, 45 Iranian learners were selected via administering an OPT test with the criteria of at least 1 standard deviation below and above the mean of the Oral Proficiency Test (OPT). Reading section of Reading Practice Test was used as the OPT. It consists of 19 items. It takes approximately 25 minutes to complete the reading test. Learners were studying in three intermediate classes in Simin Institute of Ramsar, Iran. The participants were all female and ranged in age from 17 to 19. They were divided into three groups of 15 (N=15)ː two experimental groups and a control group. A pretest of reading comprehension was administered to the three groups. The first experimental group was treated by teaching reading comprehension plus domestic newspaper; the second experimental group was treated by teaching reading comprehension plus foreign newspaper and the control group was treated by a placebo. Finally; after 10 sessions, a posttest of reading comprehension was administered to three groups. One-Way ANOVA and Paired Sample were used to analyze the obtained data. The results of One-Way ANOVA and Paired Sample indicated that the participants’ practicing domestic vs. foreign newspaper had effect on Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners’ reading comprehension ability.

The aim of this study is to identify the influence of morphological analysis strategy employed by Palestinian 10th grade-female students in guessing and manipulating complex words in addition to using these words in meaningful sentences. This study involved 75 female students from Idna Secondary School for Girls at Hebron governorate. The sample of the study was assigned to control group (37 students) and experimental group (38 students) from two different sections. To achieve the aims of the study, morphological structure test based on students’ textbook has been given to both groups in form of pretest/posttest. Meanwhile, the experimental group has received treatments on morphological analysis strategy prior to the post-test, whereas the control group hasn’t received any treatment except for the traditional way of teaching for the same two units. Results showed that the experimental group has outperformed the control group as they scored higher grades. They also scored better results in identifying the syntactic category of English words depending used in context.

This paper introduces a set of English grammar symbols that the author has developed to enhance students’ understanding and consequently, application of the English grammar rules. A pretest-posttest control-group design was carried out in which the samples were students in two girls’ senior high schools (N=135, P ≤ 0.05) divided into two groups: the Treatment which received grammar lessons with grammar symbols; and the Control which received grammar lessons without the symbols. The experiment lasted for 30 hours spanned in three months. The statistical test revealed a significant higher gain scores for the Treatment group. Thus, the author strongly recommends using these symbols (or similar ones with the same characteristics) at least for two reasons. Firstly, students do not have to memorize all of them (72 tense symbols and 50 other symbols). That is, with just a few rules to learn, and then applying the existing algorithm, other symbols are easily shaped. Secondly, using these symbols enables teachers and students to have a general idea as to what to expect next because several grammatical rules and formulae can be predicted in advance.