Sheikh Ahmad, Ismail and A. Ghani, Muhammad Faizal
(2014)
Meaning makers at work: how do above average and average students make sense of English and Bahasa literary texts?
Hope Journal of Research, 2 (3).
pp. 12-35.
ISSN 2313-8122 (P) 2307-7034 (O)
Abstract
This study seeks to explore the relationship between eight types of comprehension
questions and eight types of coded discourse units which are based on the eight subskills
of Lunzer and Gardner (1979). In general each reasoning strategy used by
selected above average and average readers in response to each test item is interpreted
and categorized as one of the eight sub-skills. Currently, no similar reading research
has been done in this area. The findings of this table suggest that both the above
average and average readers' reasoning strategies, in all the L1 and L2 texts, reflect the
usage of all the various Discourse Types (DTs) with the exception of DT 6 (M) and DT
7 (S) which are under utilized by both groups of readers (see rows 6 and 7 in Table 25).
The good readers' responses seem to be more specific and focus on every single
question type itself. The higher context-specific FSI scores of the good readers, as seen
diagonally, reflect the regulatory power of the readers in monitoring their
comprehension. It also suggests that the comprehension discourse strategies of the
readers are more active in their attempts to reason out their understanding of the
questions. This may suggest that the good readers' mastery of the content of the texts
make them rely less on the DT Forming Judgment (J). These findings seem to indicate
that the above average readers evidence a greater reflection on every QT (except on QT(J)) than the average readers. Quantitatively, the above average readers are found to
be different in their reflections of their reasoning strategies from the average readers.
The reasoning processes of the above average readers are much more focused on each
QT than those of the average readers. This shows that the good readers were able to
activate their reasoning processes within the sphere of each of the QTs individually,
relying less on other skills. This phenomenon strongly suggests that instruction in
improving poor readers' comprehension monitoring strategies should teach this unique
strategy of the good readers. In other words, reading teachers should improve the
average and poor readers' awareness and knowledge in comprehension strategies
because logically, an increase in awareness of strategic knowledge may improve pupils'
performances on reading comprehension tasks. Whether such differences, as seen by
the patterns of the Factor Specificity Index (FSIs), qualitatively reflect better and more
effective reasoning strategies by the above average readers than by the average readers may need further investigation.
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