Chapter Three Methodology
This chapter will present the detailed research design of this study. The first part is a brief description of the subjects’ background. The second part introduces the selection and design of instruments. The procedures of different treatments and data collection are described in the third section. The final part consists of the methods of data analysis.
3.1 Subjects
The subjects in this study are students enrolling in the two second-year remedial classes (Class A and Class B) in I-lan Senior High School in I-lan County. The two classes are composed of sixty-two repeaters in total. Students’ average age is 17 and they are all male students. They are all low academic achievers compared with other second-year students in this school, for they all failed at the end of the previous school year and also did not pass the make-up exam.
Students in the two classes are supposedly equal in their linguistic competence.
For further confirmation, a pretest of their vocabulary size was conducted.
Additionally, a questionnaire of motivation and a pretest of their reading proficiency were implemented to ensure the homogeneity of the two classes. To understand the influence of the subjects’ past language learning experience in this school, another questionnaire inquiring the teaching styles of their teachers in regular classes was designed by the researcher. All the results showed that these two classes of students were homogeneous on the whole. Detailed results will be presented in Chapter Four.
Meanwhile, the subjects were not informed of the purpose of the reading program
they were involved in order to avoid the irrelevant interference of individual factors such as guesswork during the test or unreasonable expectation toward the effect of the study.
3.2 Instruments
To answer the research questions, six instruments were adopted in this study.
They included (1) a vocabulary test used in the pretest and the posttest, (2) two tests of reading proficiency used in the pretest and the posttest, respectively, (3) a motivation questionnaire, (4) a questionnaire on teachers’ instruction methods in students’ regular classes, (5) ten texts supplementing the course book, and (6) questionnaires on students’ attitudes toward the treatments. The function and design of each instrument are explained as follows.
3.2.1 Pretest and posttest of vocabulary
A pretest (See Appendix A) of the subjects’ ability to recognize the target words, which would be the focus in the following treatment, was administered before the instruction. In addition, the same test was given again as the posttest after the treatment was finished in order to understand the degree of retention of the target words. The words chosen in the test were selected according to the steps mentioned in the following. First, all the words appearing as marginal glosses for the supplementary reading materials were listed. If a word appeared in the same passage for more than once, it would still be tabulated as one occurrence, for it was glossed only once in the same passage. Similarly, derivations of a lexis were categorized as the same entry.
Then the number of entries occurring only once and those occurring more than once were calculated. The tabulation showed that there were twenty-two entries which appeared in different passages twice or more, while fifty entries occurred only once.
In order to compare the effect of occurrence of words on the subjects’ memorization, the test was divided into three sections: words appearing more than once in the supplementary reading passages, those appearing only once, and those occurring only in the textbook but not in the supplementary reading texts. To make an even number of words tested in different sections, twenty words appearing more than once in the supplementary texts and twenty words appearing once were arranged in the first and second section of the vocabulary test respectively. Another twenty keywords appearing in the target lessons in the textbook but not in the supplementary texts were included in the third section. Words chosen from each lesson were ordered alphabetically to avoid any bias toward words in any lesson. Sixty words in total were given in English along with their parts of speech.
Furthermore, to maintain that the three subsections of the vocabulary test included words of similar levels of difficulty, word frequency of each word was tabulated and the mean of word frequency of each section was calculated. Word frequency was tabulated according to the list provided on line by the Longman Publisher as a companion to the book “Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English: based on the British National Corpus”. The book is derived from the British National Corpus - a 100,000,000 word electronic databank sampled from the whole range of present-day English, spoken and written - and makes use of the grammatical information that has been added to each word in the corpus. Word frequency is counted per million words. However, six words were absent on the list. They were
“superstition” from Subtest 1, “condolence”, “insecurity”, “mourn”, and “procession”
from Subtest 2, and “prestige” from Subtest 3. The result (Table 3.1) showed that there was no significant difference among the three sections of words with regard to their word frequency.
Table 3.1 WORD FREQUENCY OF THE WORDS IN THE VOCABULARY TEST
Subtest Mean F p
Subtest 1 (n= 19)
81.26 (62.63)
.007 .993
Subtest 2 (n=16)
82.81 (72.69) Subtest 3
(n=19)
84.05 (80.55)
Total 82.70
(70.94)
* p < .05 SD in the parenthesis
When taking the vocabulary test, the subjects were required to provide their Chinese translation. Scoring was based on the Chinese glosses the subjects provided.
There were three main sources of the criteria of Chinese translation: glosses in the textbook, the reference book, and the small pocket vocabulary booklet provided by the textbook publisher. Another senior high school English teacher with ten years of teaching experience was recruited in the scoring process. There was no discrepancy between the recruited teacher’s and the researcher’s scoring results.
3.2.2. Reading proficiency
Two reading comprehension proficiency tests (See Appendix B) used in the pretest and the posttest were developed by the researcher. Reading comprehension was one of the primary goals set for students before they read. It was hoped that the modification of the reading materials in the present study did not obviate students’
attention from the main purpose of reading for overall comprehension. It was necessary to measure whether students’ general reading ability would be maintained or even increase as claimed in other studies.
Ten passages of similar length, difficulty indexes, genres and subjects, were
adapted from two sources: Reading Comprehension Exercise Book published by the Classroom Publisher from Hong Kong and two adapted texts from Chan’s (2003) reading proficiency tests given to the repeaters in her study. Chan (2003) conducted a study investigating the effects of cooperative learning through literature reading on Taiwan senior high repeaters’ English reading comprehension. She developed two reading comprehension tests as the pretest and posttest for her subjects. The researcher of the present study conducted the experiment among students in the same school as the subjects in Chan’s study. Therefore, two passages were adapted from Chan’s reading comprehension tests with some modification to suit the purpose of the present study. Each test contained five passages with eight multiple-choice reading comprehension questions, including both local and global ones, following each passage. Local comprehension questions were those testing the subjects’ reading comprehension of the supporting details, while global comprehension questions examined their understanding of reference, vocabulary in context, inference, subject matter and main idea. 2.5 points were given to each correct answer and the total score was one hundred. The difficulty level of each passage was measured on the computer software of Flesch-Kincaid Difficulty Index. In addition, in all ten passages, glosses of new words that were essential for reading comprehension but whose meanings could not be inferred from the contexts, were offered alongside each word. The titles, subjects, and readability of each passage are listed in Table 3.2:
Table 3.2 THE LENGTH AND DIFFICULTY LEVEL OF THE PASSAGES USED FOR THE PRETEST AND THE POSTTEST
Title Subject Difficulty Index Word Number
Pre-test
Cupid and Psyche Mythology 4.5 248
San Fermin Festival 5.3 225
St. Petersburg Travel 6.3 245
Looking for Diamonds Story 3.9 304
Paper Crane Biography 6.3 255
Mean 5.26 255.4
Post-test
The Underground Palace Legend 5.9 235
St. Petersburg Travel 6.3 245
Pizarro the Explorer Biography 5.8 249
Elephants Alive and Dead Information 3.9 328
Nanotechnology Technology 6.4 221
Mean 5.66 255.6
The two reading proficiency tests were in the same range of the readability level, falling from 3.9 to 6.4 according to the computer software of Flesch-Kincaid Difficulty Index, with a mean of 5.26 and 5.66 respectively. The average number of words in these two tests was 255.4 and 255.6 words. Additionally, there was a similar distribution of genres and subjects in both the pretest and the posttest1.
1 These two tests overlapped in some subjects such as mythology/ legend, travel, and biography. They differed in the other two passages. In the pretest, the subjects of “festival” and “story” were chosen while in the posttest, “information” and “technology”, in order to cover a wider range of topics in the tests.
After the researcher completed the selection of articles and the design of comprehension questions, seven students who were at the similar level with the subjects were requested to read through the passages and take the test. These students flunked their English class but passed the make-up tests later. They were the group of students whose language proficiency and background were closest to the target subjects’ in the present study. They were asked to circle words which were not glossed but would hinder their comprehension of the passage. The words they circled and the results of their taking the tests were examined to make a final modification of the two tests.
3.2.3 Motivation questionnaire
Motivation has been observed to be influential in learners’ performance and achievement, which is especially crucial in accounting for low achievers’ failure in academic circumstances. A motivation questionnaire (See Appendix C) was distributed prior to the study to examine whether there was a difference in motivation between the two groups. The questionnaire was adapted from Chan (2003) and Lin (2004)2, with minor modifications to suit the present study. The questionnaire contained thirty-five items developed into a Liker-type questionnaire in Chinese, with five options for each statement. Most of the questions were given from the positive point of view, scored from one to five points corresponding to the answers of
“strongly disagree,” “disagree,” “neutral,” “agree,” to “strongly agree.” Before the
2 Lin’s (2004) motivation questionnaire was adapted from Schmidt et al. (1996). Her adapted version focused on learners’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. On the other hand, Chan’s (2003) questionnaire attended to learners’ amotivation and learning strategies. For the present study, the researcher adopted the model of motivation suggested by Noels et al. (2000). In their model, motivation was comprised of three constructs: intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation and amotivation. Thus, the questionnaire of the present study was a combination of the two aforementioned questionnaires. Learning strategies were also added to the questionnaire, for previous research also showed that inappropriate learning strategies might also played a crucial role in learners’ academic performance (Oxford, 1990; Wenden &
Rubin, 1987; O’Malley & Chamot, 1990).
study, a pilot study was administered to the seven students, who had read the supplementary reading passages, to confirm that there were no ambiguous words or confusing statements to mislead the subjects.
The 35 questions could be divided into four sections, each concerning the subject’s extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation, amotivation and learning strategies, respectively. Questions 2 to 5 and 15 to 22 inquired about the subjects’
extrinsic motivation. Questions 1, 8 and 11 were concerned about the subjects’
intrinsic motivation. Questions 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13 and 14 investigated their level of amotivation. Questions of these three sections were mingled to avoid the influence of similar questions and the possibility of guessing. The final section, ranging from Questions 23 to 35, was related to the subjects’ language learning strategies, such as setting up study plans, implementation of one’s study plans, techniques used to enhance one’s four language skills and so on. The score of each section would be calculated and compared separately.
3.2.4 A questionnaire on teachers’ instruction methods in students’ regular classes
Before the study, a questionnaire inquiring about the subjects’ opinions on their teachers’ instruction methods in their regular classes was conducted (See Appendix D).
Previous studies seldom made effort to understand students’ learning environment and blamed the poor learning effects on the so-called “traditional teaching method” solely based on prototypes among the general public. Thus, an investigation is necessary to understand students’ previous language learning experience in their regular classes.
The researcher developed the present questionnaire in Chinese, according to the information that she intended to gather. The questionnaire was composed of six questions eliciting both quantitative data as well as descriptive statements in order to
obtain a more complete picture of their daily class routines. Originally, the questionnaire was designed to elicit descriptive statements from the subjects in the pilot study. Then, answers from the thirteen students participating in the pilot study were analyzed and categorized into multiple choices following each question. Except for the first and sixth questions, the subjects were not limited to making only one choice in the other four questions. That means, the revised version of this questionnaire consisted of questions obtaining both quantitative and qualitative data.
Also, to elicit more possibilities of the subjects’ answers besides the listed choices, they were encouraged to provide descriptive statements in the space given after each question.
The first question was about the order of teachers’ instructing the three main parts in a lesson: vocabulary, sentence patterns and reading selection. The order that each teacher followed could suggest their emphasis on a certain area of language learning and their beliefs in language teaching. The order showed six different combinations of the three parts. The subjects were asked to check one of them. From the second question to the fourth one, the subjects were requested to reflect on their teachers’ techniques of teaching reading selection, vocabulary and grammar, or sentence patterns. The fifth question included six classroom activities suggested by the students in the pilot study. The subjects in the present study were asked to recall if there was any in their regular classes. More types of activities could be provided if they could remember any. Finally, the six questions intended to understand the subjects’ general feelings of their teachers and which part of their instruction impressed them most. The English translation of the statement in this questionnaire has been provided below:
Table 3.3 A QUESTIONNAIRE ON TEACHERS’ INSTRUCTION METHODS IN STUDENTS’ REGULAR CLASS (English)
(1) The way a lesson is presented follows the order of3 1. Vocabulary, Grammar, Reading
2. Vocabulary, Reading, Grammar 3. Grammar, Vocabulary, Reading 4. Grammar, Reading, Vocabulary 5. Reading, Vocabulary, Grammar 6. Reading, Grammar, Vocabulary
(2) Techniques of teaching the reading selection 1. Reading a passage and asking students to repeat 2. Playing the CD
3. Explaining the meaning of the passage
4. Explaining grammatical structures and patterns 5. Underlining key points
(3) Techniques of teaching vocabulary 1. Reading words and asking students to repeat 2. Playing the CD
3. Providing synonyms 4. Providing word derivations 5. Providing word-related phrases 6. Explaining word usage
7. Providing the collocation of a word 8. Dividing a word into its root and affixes 9. Explaining the way to pronounce a word 10. Reading example sentences
11. Explaining example sentences
12. Doing activities with words taught in class (4) Techniques of teaching grammar
1. Explaining example sentences
2. Explaining grammatical patterns/ structures 3. Providing other example sentences
3 The variations of the order of instruction were derived from students’ responses in the pilot study. In the pilot study, students’ replies belonged to “Vocabulary, Grammar, Reading” and “Vocabulary, Reading, Grammar” mainly. However, in order not to omit any other possible options, another four combinations were listed in the questionnaire.
4. Doing exercises in the textbook 5. Proving related patterns/ structures 6. Doing activities with the pattern/structure (5) Other in-class activities
1. Group competition 2. Singing a song
3. Role-playing/ Mini-drama 4. Group discussion
5. Group report 6. Watching films
(6) Which part of your teacher’s instruction do you like? Why?
3.2.5 Ten texts supplementing the course book
In the present study, the Far East English Reader for Senior High Schools Book III was the textbook chosen for regular classes, and hence the primary material for
these two remedial classes. Owing to the time available for the remedial class and considering the load of the subjects, only five out of the twelve texts were chosen for the remedial class4. For the Experimental Group, two supplementary texts (See Appendix E) were provided for each single lesson. The reasons for providing two supplementary texts for each lesson are as follows: (1) Though the literature review showed that for vocabulary to be consolidated in extensive reading, five encounters were the minimum, in the present study, the reading experience was aided by vocabulary-enhancing exercises. Therefore, it was supposed that the amount of exposure could be lower than that reported in the literature. (2) From Hulstijn, Hollander, and Greidanus’s (1996) and Chang’s (2002) investigations, three exposures in the same text could have had more significant effect than simply one exposure in the immediate test. (3) For a regular class, time and energy should also be taken into
4 The titles of the lessons chosen for the present study were: 1) “Reading is Like a Journey”, 2)
“Advertising”, 3) “Mother Teresa”, 4) “Time Travel”, and 5) “Superstition”. The reason why these lessons were selected was that they represented different topics and could add variety to the reading program.
consideration, and two more supplementary texts should be reasonably sufficient to reach the maximum effect within the confinement of time. The texts were gathered through various sources, mainly the supplementary exercise book and the extensive reading book for the course book, both provided by the course book publisher. The passage titled “Are You Popular” was adapted from a reading selection in the latest version of Lungteng English Reader Book I. Another passage “Superstitions About Cats” was downloaded from the Internet. Some modifications were made based on the suggestions provided by Nation (1990) and Yeh (1985) to fit the desired difficulty level and the number of key words. All the passages were edited by a native speaker with an M.A. degree in linguistics. A final confirmation of text difficulty was calculated on the Flesch-Kincaid Difficulty Index computer software. A pilot study was conducted to have seven students with a similar level to the target students read and confirm the difficulty of these ten texts. In addition, in the pilot study, if students showed low interest in a certain passage, then the passage was abandoned, and substituted with a more appealing one. Such a move was meant to maintain a certain level of interest in the chosen passages, which hopefully would arouse the subjects’
curiosity about the content. Moreover, these students were requested to circle the words that were unknown to them apart from the target words. Words which were circled frequently and could not be guessed from context were glossed along with vocabulary.
The titles, subjects, number of words and difficulty index are as follows:
Table 3.4 THE LENGTH AND DIFFICULTY LEVEL OF THE TEN PASSAGES
Title Subject Difficulty Index Word Number
The British Library Travel 6.9 233
Technology in Our Homes Technology 6.1 237
Advertising Life 7.4 210
Are You Popular Life 4.5 342
Princess Diana Biography 6.2 316
The Tzu Chi Foundation Biography 7.2 285
Computers Technology 6.0 315
Space Travel Travel 5.3 297
Some Superstitions Culture 7.5 217
Superstitions About Cats Culture 5.8 255
To make the target words more prominent, they were bold-faced. Their Chinese glosses were provided in the margins of the passages. According to Chang (2002), marginal glosses lead to a smoother reading process. In her study, the subjects demonstrated better incidental vocabulary learning in the posttest as predicted. Hence, marginal glosses instead of other types of glosses were provided.
Following each passage was a set of vocabulary-enhancing exercises. A certain number of discrete sentences with the target words deleted were supplied. The number of sentences was based on the number of target words in each passage. Though the sentences were separated, they were, in fact, the rewritten versions of the original passages. The combination of the sentences in the vocabulary exercise was a short summary of the reading passage. It was expected that by reviewing what was already known to the subjects, they would be able to refresh their memory of the target words
and the contexts in which the words appeared. Moreover, focusing on something familiar might lower their affective filter, which is more beneficial in terms of language acquisition (Brown, 2000).
In order not to digress students’ attention to vocabulary entirely, the subjects’
comprehension of the reading passage was checked immediately after they read each passage. Each test was composed of five multiple-choice reading comprehension questions, including one or two global questions5 and three or four local ones. The passage and the questions were on the same worksheet. Thus, the passage was available to the students while their reading comprehension was evaluated. The reasons are as follows. First, the test was not designed to test students’ memory.
Therefore, as long as they could understand the passage, they could refer to the passage while doing the comprehension exercise. Second, in authentic reading process, readers are able to refer back to the passage to assess their comprehension. The design of reading comprehension questions was supposed to be true to the genuine reading process and purpose. However, no glosses of the target words were provided, for one of the requirements of the remedial course was that the subjects could memorize the target words. Hence, the subjects were expected to have acquired the language while demonstrating a certain degree of reading ability.
Due to the above-mentioned modifications of the reading materials used in the present study, the ten passages were regarded as “semi-authentic” reading materials for the following reasons. First, they attempted to serve the function as a medium of authentic communication between the writer and the readers. The difficulty level of each passage, whether cognitive or linguistic, was calibrated to the subjects’
competence. It was hoped that the selected passage would correspond to the general
5 Global questions included those examined readers’ understanding of the main idea, reference and inference from the passage.
expectation of reading smoothness in genuine circumstances. However, since there was much modification for the sake of easiness of reading, there was an obvious discrepancy between the content and the linguistic code. Complex conception was expressed through comparatively straightforward structures and words. Thus, the discrepancy in the reading material made it fail to meet the standard of authenticity in general. Due to the aforementioned reasons, the passages chosen in this study should be labeled as “semi-authentic” material.
3.2.6 A questionnaire on students’ attitudes toward the treatments
The questionnaire (See Appendix F) was modified from Lin (2004) to investigate the subjects’ reactions to the experience of the reading program. It was mainly made up of two parts. The first part was concerned with the effects of task-based supplementary reading. This part contained sixteen items, developed into a Liker-type questionnaire in Chinese, with five options in each statement scoring from one to five points corresponding to the answers of “strongly disagree,” “disagree,” “neutral,”
“agree,” and “strongly agree.” These questions were designed to ask students to recount their experience of the reading program they had participated in. Two more open-ended questions were given to understand students’ difficulty and self-evaluation of improvement in the reading process. The second part consisted of two scales for students to rate their perception of the difficulty and interest of each supplementary passage. The second part was designed to verify whether the chosen texts were to students’ interest. An English translation of the first part is given below:
Table 3.5 A QUESTIONNAIRE ON STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARD THE TREATMENTS (English)
Statement
I think supplementary reading can 1. help increase my reading speed.
2. help increase my reading proficiency.
3. train my ability to read individually.
4. help review the words I have learned.
5. increase the amount of my vocabulary.
6. help increase my knowledge.
7. increase my interest in learning language.
With regard to the target words in the supplementary reading material, 8. printing them in bold helps make them more impressive.
9. the marginal glosses help me understand the articles.
10. the marginal glosses help make them more impressive.
11. the glosses following the unknown words help me read the articles.
12. the glosses following the unknown words help make the unknown words more impressive.
13. the vocabulary exercises following each article help make the target words more impressive.
14. the vocabulary exercises following each article help me review the target words.
The reading comprehension exercises following each article 15. help make the target words more impressive.
16. help me review the words I have learned.
17. What is the difficulty that you encountered during the reading program?
18. What are your gains in the reading program?
3.3 Procedures of instruction and data collection
The researcher carried out the instruction in both the experimental group and the control group. The subjects were not informed of the aims of the study for the purpose of preventing any bias or Hawthorne effect (Snyder, 1993). The detailed steps of procedures of this study are described as follows in three stages: before the study, during the study, and after the study.
3.3.1 Before the implementation of the study
A pilot study was administered to students who had been failed but passed the make-up exam. Moreover, these students were asked to check the ten texts chosen in the Experimental Group and the wording in the questionnaires.
Participants in the present study were compared to ensure the homogeneity between the two groups and within each group. Before the study, both groups were notified of the time schedule of the course, the test time and the test forms (See Table 3.6). The duration of the experiments were two weeks. They also knew that the results of all the achievement and proficiency tests would be counted into their grades in the remedial course, in the hope of encouraging them to do their best on the tests. After the announcement, students were asked to fill out the motivation and the instruction style questionnaires. Results of the questionnaires from both groups were submitted to t-test analysis to ensure no significant difference between these two groups.
Following the orientation class, students were engaged in reading comprehension proficiency and vocabulary knowledge pretests. The results were analyzed by ANOVA. The pretests were to ensure the homogeneity of the two groups.
After that, Class A was randomly assigned as the Experimental Group while Class B, the Control Group. There was no difference in the classroom management in these two groups.
Table 3.6 Time Schedule for the Remedial Classes
Period Experimental Group Control Group
I Orientation/ Motivation Questionnaire/ Instruction Methods Questionnaire/ Reading Proficiency Test/ Vocabulary Knowledge Test
II& III Lesson 1/ extensive reading (80 mins)
Test (10 mins) Lesson 1(80 mins) Test (10 mins)
IV& V Lesson 2/ extensive reading (80 mins)
Test (10 mins) Lesson 2(80 mins) Test (10 mins)
VI& VII Lesson 7/ extensive reading (80 mins)
Test (10 mins) Lesson 7(80 mins) Test (10 mins)
VIII& IX Lesson 8/ extensive reading (80 mins)
Test (10 mins) Lesson 8(80 mins) Test (10 mins)
X& XI Lesson 12/ extensive reading (80 mins)
Test (10 mins) Lesson 12(80 mins)
Test (10 mins)
XII Attitude Toward Extensive Reading Questionnaire/ Reading Proficiency Posttest/ Vocabulary Knowledge Posttest
Reading Proficiency Posttest/
Vocabulary Knowledge Posttest
3.3.2 During the implementation of the study
During the implementation stage of the study, ten 90-minute sessions instruction extended over two weeks6. The researcher conducted the instruction and the exercise by herself. In both groups, the whole class period lasted 90 minutes, which was divided into two phases.
In the first phase, which took 80 minutes, the Control Group participated in a teacher-oriented instruction of the target lesson in the textbook. Steps were followed according to the data gathered from students’ responses to the questionnaire on their regular class teachers’ instruction methods. The researcher alternated between the two
6 The duration of the experiment was comparatively short due to the limited length of time set by the administration. Such limitation is the same problem existing in the remedial classes of all subjects in the present circumstances.
most followed instruction routines reported by the subjects, which were (1) vocabulary, reading, and grammar, and (2) vocabulary, grammar, and reading (See Table 4.5). While teaching vocabulary, grammar, or reading, only those techniques which were reported by over 70% of the total subjects were applied (See Table 4.6), since the short time span of the remedial class did not allow for too many variations and the subjects might not be able to adjust to a frequent change of teaching techniques.
As for the Experimental Group, fifty minutes were allocated to the instruction of the target lessons and thirty minutes to extensive reading with vocabulary-enhancing exercises. The design of the vocabulary-enhancing exercises was based on the study design from Tu (2004), Lee (2003) and Chang (2002) and the procedure was inspired by the study done by Paribakht and Wesche (1994). Since the present study aimed to investigate the applicability of a reading program in regular classes, even in the Experimental Group, part of the instruction time was allocated to intensive reading.
The teacher-oriented instruction was similar to that in the Control Group, yet the time devoted to detailed explanation of the reading text was omitted and reserved for the extensive reading exercise. The subjects were required to obtain a global understanding of the reading selection and some fundamental ideas rather than a word-by-word translation of it. During the extensive reading period, the Experimental Group worked on the supplementary texts and the vocabulary exercises attached to each passage. Students carried out the task by themselves most of the time. The researcher just supervised the subjects’ work and offered individual aid. However, the correctness of each blank students had filled in was checked before they were tested on their reading comprehension.
The second phase of each group, which lasted ten minutes in both groups, was expended on the reading comprehension questions of the supplementary reading
material for the Experimental Group or the cloze test on the reading text for the Control Group. Grades were given for both kinds of tests.
3.3.3 After the implementation of the study
Immediately after the ten sessions of instruction, the posttests of reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge were given to the experimental and control groups. The outcomes were submitted to ANCOVA statistical analysis to understand if any differences existed between the two groups. Furthermore, the participants in the Experimental Group were asked to fill in a questionnaire to show their attitudes toward modified supplementary reading material with vocabulary-enhancing exercises.
To sum up, the procedures for data collection were as follows: (1) students’
learning motivation and teachers’ instruction style questionnaires, (2) the pretests on reading comprehension proficiency and vocabulary knowledge, (3) instruction and extensive reading exercises, (4) the posttests of reading comprehension proficiency and vocabulary knowledge, and (5) the questionnaire on the subjects’ attitudes toward extensive reading exercises.
3.4 Data analysis
Quantitatively, the computer software of SPSS for Windows was utilized to analyze the collected data to answer the research questions. Statistical data were submitted either to t-test or to ANCOVA to compare intra- and inter-group differences.
Responses to open-ended questions were coded and categorized by the researcher.
