The Effects of Reading Strategies Instruction on Graduate Students’ Reading Comprehension

Abstract

This research aimed to investigate the effects of reading strategies instruction on graduate students’ reading comprehension whose reading comprehension abilities are moderate. The randomly-selected, pretest-posttest control-group research design was employed with first-year graduate students in the academic year 2005 from various faculties at a public university in Bangkok. After sixteen weeks of instruction, both groups were administered a reading comprehension post-test and ten subjects in the experimental group were randomly selected and interviewed to elicit their attitudes towards using reading strategies. Based on both statistical data and interviews, there was substantial evidence to show that there were positive outcomes even though there were no statistically significant differences among the subjects studied. However, examining the experiment throughout the whole process, the research yields the result that there was something qualitatively different among the two groups, especially the teaching-learning atmosphere and the classroom-interactions, which were overtly observed.