Interaction of Different Kinds of Advance Organizer Strategies and Read-ing Comprehension Skills: Right- and Left-Brain EFL Learners Across Gender
Subject Areas :Fatemeh Amini Asl 1 , Fatemeh Mirzapour 2 * , Ali Asghar Yousefi Azarfam 3
1 - Department of English, Sarab Branch, Islamic Azad University, Sarab,Iran
2 - Department of English, Sofiyan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Sofiyan, Iran
3 - Department of English, Sofiyan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Sofiyan, Iran
Keywords: Advance Organizers, Graphic Organizers, Left-Brained, Reading Comprehension, Right-Brained, Textual Organizers, Verbal Organizers,
Abstract :
This study investigated the effects of different kinds of advanced organizers, such as graphic, verbal, and textual organizers, on the reading comprehension of left- and right-brained Iranian EFL learners. The participants of the study were 64 female and 54 male intermediate-level EFL learners with ages ranging from 19 to 28 (M = 23) and varying degrees of brain dominance from Mohaghegh Language Institute in Tabriz, Iran. Four intact classes, one control group and three experimental groups including graphic organizer, verbal organizer, and textual organizer groups participated in this study. The design of the study was aquasi-experimental design with a pretest and a posttest. The uniformity of the EFL students was ensured using the Oxford Place-ment Test (OPT). The Alert Scale of Cognitive Style (Crane, 1989) was used to identify left- and right-brained EFL students. The research recreated the pretest and posttest in this study to assess the participants' reading comprehension before and after the intervention. The ANCOVA results demonstrated a significant impact of the use of advance organizers on the participants' reading comprehension scores. The only significant difference in reading comprehension mean scores was between participants who used graphic organizers and textual organizers; there was no sta-tistically significant difference between participants who used verbal organizers and textual or-ganizers. Students with left and right brains performed about equally well in the textual organiz-er group. Students with right-brained personalities outperformed those with left-brained person-alities in the graphic organizer group, but the reverse was true for the verbal organizer group. However, there was little difference in the reading comprehension levels between the groups. Additionally, the results demonstrated that females used advanced organizers more skillfully than males did. The results imply that various advance organizers ought to be included in L2 reading courses.
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