2015 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
The Effect of Visual Syntactic Text Format on Reading Comprehension and Proficiency
Project/Area Number |
26770189
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Research Institution | Saitama University |
Principal Investigator |
ヒューズ リアンダー 埼玉大学, 英語教育開発センター, 准教授 (80513861)
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Project Period (FY) |
2014-04-01 – 2016-03-31
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Keywords | CALL / text formatting / reading |
Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
This research project investigated the long-term effects of reading in a syntactically parsed text format called Visual Syntactic Text Format (VSTF). During the first year of the project, an online extensive reading application called AnyRead was developed to monitor students' reading of online texts of their choosing. Over the second year of the project, this program was utilized to test the hypothesis that reading in a parsed text format over time would lead to greater reading retention and overall proficiency growth than reading in regular block text format. During this stage, 763 student participants were asked to read a total of 80,000 words worth of texts of their choosing via AnyRead as part of their general English course homework. Approximately half of these students (n = 381) read 90% of their texts in the parsed text format and 10% in regular block text format, while the remaining 382 students read 90% of their texts in regular block text format and 10% in the parsed text format. A total of 289 participants actually completed their reading work (n = 147 in the parsed format group and n = 142 in the block format group) and so were included in the final analyses. Proficiency growth was measured via pre and post Tests of English for International Communication (TOEIC) while reading retention was measured by performance on AnyRead's automatically generated retention questions. Results showed no significant differences in retention or proficiency growth between the parsed and block format groups.
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