effects of online short stories on reading attitudes and transfer of learning from viewing comprehension to reading comprehension
This study examines the effects of the transfer of learning from viewing comprehension of short stories embedded in Blackboard YouTube mashups to reading short stories on Saudi Arabian college EFL seniors and their attitudes toward reading in English. The researcher employed an experimental pretest-posttest, control group design, recruiting 26 seniors to the experimental group who viewed a twelve-week online short story-based reading course after viewing them on YouTube and 25 seniors to a control group that studied the same course but without short stories. The control group was not engaged in any short story reading inside or outside the classroom. All participants were pretested using a Reading Attitude Survey and a reading comprehension test developed by the researcher. The pretest-posttest data analysis demonstrated that the experimental participants outperformed the control group on reading attitudes and reading comprehension at a significant level. The study ended with a discussion of the results in the context of pertinent literature and extrapolated relevant pedagogical implications and conclusions, and suggestions for further research. (Published abstract)