The effect of pre-reading instruction in comprehending English language texts: Gembe Secondary School grade 9 in focus

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of pre-reading instruction in comprehending English language texts. An experiment was designed and conducted to investigate the significant difference between control and comparison groups. Four prereading activities (vocabulary definition, pre-questioning, brainstorming and providing background knowledge) were used for the treatment. A pre-test and post-test reading comprehension and vocabulary test, a questionnaire and classroom observations were employed in the study to collect data. The pre and post-tests aimed at measuring reading comprehension and vocabulary skills of the students. The subjects of the study were 104, control group (n=52) and comparison group (n=52) of Grade 9 students and one English teacher who taught thecontrol group. To get a representative sample, random sampling method that is lottery method was used for selecting the participants as a sample. After the administration of the tests, the data were collected and subjected to statistical analysis. An independent sample t-test was used to test the hypotheses in this study. The test score of the two groups were analyzed using the SPSS version 16 statistical software program. The major finding obtained from the statistical analysis shows that teaching pre-reading activities had brought about a significant improvement between the pre-test and post-test of the comparison group than the control group. Finally, the result of the questionnaire and classroom observation showed that the classroom teacher did not teach essential pre-reading activities which help to comprehend the text by activating the students prior knowledge. It is recommended that English language teachers need to teach pre-reading activities by activating students' background knowledge to comprehend the text. IV