Cebu International EFL Conference

Abstract of Paper

Author

Associate Professor Dr. Natchaya Chalaysap
National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA)
Thailand

Title
A Comparative Study between Syntactic Structure Identification
Training and Integrated Reading Strategy Training in Teaching
English Sentence Reading

Abstract
The objectives of this experimental study were (1) to compare the effectiveness of the syntactic structure identification training and that of integrated reading strategy training in teaching sentence reading comprehension; (2) to identify the relationship between syntactic/sentence structure analysis and sentence comprehension; and (3) to analyze the errors in the students’ translated sentences to find out their strategies in comprehending the text. 

The subjects were two groups of M.A. students from the School of Public Administration, National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA), who enrolled in LC 4001 Reading Skills Development in English for Graduate Studies 1, in the first semester of the academic year 2008.  The scores from the pre-test in both groups were matched to have students with more or less the same ability in the control group and the experimental group (30 students in each group).  The control group was trained on syntactic structure identification for 24 hours and on sentence interpretation for 12 hours, while the experimental group was trained on integrated reading strategies for 12 hours and sentence interpretation for 6 hours.   Two tests were used as the research instruments.  It was found that in the first test the experimental group had a significantly higher mean than the control group in translation and comprehension, but no significant difference was found in sentence analysis. 

In the second test, the experimental group was also superior to the control group in sentence interpretation, while the mean scores of the pre-test and the post test in the latter group was found to have no significant difference.  This indicated that integrated reading strategy training was more effective than structure identification training.  As for their reading process as reflected by the errors in translation, it was found that many students often overlooked connectives and supplied their own in translation, resulting in misinterpretation of the text and that the vocabulary problem mainly caused them to activate a wrong schema and thus misinterpret the text, while the main syntactic problem was comprehending nouns with pre-noun modifiers, expressions, and an unusual word order of the sentence.