شبكة المعلومات العربية التربوية

The present study investigated the effect of training students in text-structure awareness on the reading comprehension of two expository text types among upper-intermediate learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). These text types included description/collection of descriptions, and cause/effect. Interaction between training in text structure awareness and reading proficiency level was examined. A quasi-experimental design was employed. Sixty-two students in two different grade ten sections were assigned into the experimental and control group. To measure students’ reading proficiency level, students in both groups sat for the reading comprehension part of an SAT test. Both groups had to read description/collection of descriptions and cause/effect expository texts and write what they recalled from the passages. The scores of these recalls were considered as the study’s pre-test of comprehension. After that, the experimental group was trained in the rhetorical structures of description/collection of descriptions and cause/effect essays through the use of graphic organizers while the control group read the same texts that were used in training of the experimental group, but did linguistic tasks instead. Then, post-test was administered where students in both groups read description/collection of descriptions and cause/effect passages and wrote written recalls of them. Descriptive statistics and two univariate analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) tests were conducted. The results revealed that there was a significant difference between the control group and the experimental group in the recall scores of cause/effect and description post-tests. Moreover, there was a significant interaction between the treatment of cause/effect texts and reading proficiency levels. Also, it was found that there was a significant interaction between the treatment of description texts and reading proficiencylevels. Finally, paired samples t-test was conducted,and results indicated that students recalled significantly more ideas from a cause/effect text type than from a description text in the post-test.