306 Lillian Groebel

with greater practice in the construction of questions, and more rigid screening, it is hoped that the possibility of more than one reply will be eliminated. The students liked the test. They found the variety in questionform interesting and the mental exercise it generated stimulating. The teachers also liked the test and were gratified when the results showed a higher correspondence between examination performance and teacher assessment of student ability than had been obtained in previous years, when only multiple-choice questions were used. We shall certainly retain this combination of questions in our final examinations and would suggest that other university classes should experiment with it.

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A Comparison of Two Strategies in the Teaching of Reading Comprehension

LILLIAN GROEBEL
RESEARCH indicates that there is little difference, if any, between the various strategies for teaching the reading comprehension of foreignlanguage texts (Smith, 1970).1 Because of the limitations of recent studies as to methods, languages, and levels observed, an investigation was undertaken at the University of Haifa pertaining to the situation at that university. The pilot study was initiated in 1976, and was repeated in 1977, with minor changes and a larger number of students.

Sample The population consisted of first-year students (aged 20 or older), native speakers of Hebrew, studying in the faculties of humanities and social sciences and em oiled in the 100-hour required English course. The objective of the course was improved reading comprehension of texts in English. All students had completed eight years of English or the equivalent and had achieved the required level in the English sub-test of the entrance examination administered by the university. The pilot study involved 49 students and the second study, in
1 Paul D . Smith, A Comparison of the Cognitive and Audiollngual Approaches to Foreign Language Instruction: The Pennsylvania Foreign Language Project, Chilton, Center for Curriculum Development, 1970.

Two Strategies in the Teaching of Reading Comprehension 307 1977-8, 125 students. Results of both investigations will be reported. Such 'small-scale intervention' type research, in which the sample is restricted, has been defended by H. Douglas Brown (1977)* for its important contributions to teaching methodology. Procedure The focus of the study was on two teaching strategies that would differentiate between maximum and minimum instructional roles. It was hypothesized that students would be able to achieve an equal or higher level of reading achievement with less than the usual amount of direct instruction and more individual activity. The first method considered was the traditional-frontal in which students were asked to read and prepare a text at home, researching difficult lexical items and working towards comprehension. Then in class they wereto raise questions and discuss the text under the teacher's direction. The instructor's role was a major one, for it was expected that she would provide opportunities for discussion of vocabulary, difficult sentence structure, examination of writer's purpose and attitude, exploration of main idea, example, comparisons, definitions, arguments, inferences, and an over-all evaluation of the text. All pertinent language problems were explained in the context of the article being studied. For the second strategy students were not asked to prepare the material. They were told to bring dictionaries (bilingual, monolingual, or both) to class, and were then given the same texts that were being examined in depth by the traditional-frontal groups. They were also given written questions that referred to the text and were in the form of multiple-choice, open-ended, short-answer, and fill-in items. The questions concerned word, sentence, and paragraph meaning, anaphora, main idea, writer's purpose and attitude, argument, examples, inferences, and comparisons. This second group was known as the self-test group and the teacher's role was kept minimal. The students worked on the texts independently, using dictionaries and responding to the questions in writing with no instructional assistance. Papers were collected, answers marked right or wrong, and then returned to the students. They were permitted to raise questions about their errors or about problems with the text; but, surprisingly, they showed little interest in exploring the material. They wished primarily to discover right answers and not much more than that. This attitude helped to minimize, even further, the role of the teacher, who became a reporter of right answers, while the teacher of the traditional-frontal group was more of a guide and instructor, filling the teaching role as we generally conceive it. H. Douglas Brown, 'The English teacher as researcher1, ELT, XXXI, 4, 1977.

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308 Lillian Groebel Criterion The criterion used to measure the gain in the level of reading comprehension for each of the two groups was a cloze test. It was selected because of its reliability, its high correlation with standardized tests of reading comprehension (Bormuth, 1969),8 its objectivity, and particularly because it discriminates effectively among students at different reading levels of a foreign language (Ozette, 1974).4 The test was administered to students of both groups at the beginning of the study; then a re-test was given at the conclusion of the study, about six months later. Students did not notice that they were being re-tested with the same material. The results of the tests are shown in Tables 1 and 2.
Table 1 1976-1977 Group Traditional-frontal standard deviation Self-test standard deviation P < 05 N 20 29 Pre-test mean 39-60 11-30 3117 11-92 Re-test mean 52-20 15-43 44-55 13-29 Gain + 12-60 + 13-38

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t-test unpaired = 0066 Table 2 1977-1978

Group Traditional-frontal standard deviation Self-test standard deviation

N 63 62

Pre-test mean 16-09 5-55 17-45 4-76

Re-test mean 18-14 5-33 19-70 4-43

Gain + 2 05

+2-25

P<05

t-test unpaired = 0-423

Results Table 1 for the 1976-7 study shows the mean scores for both the traditional-frontal group and the self-test group at the beginning of the study (pre-test) and at the end (re-test). It also shows the gain
'J. R. Bormuth, 'Factor validity of cloze tests as measures of reading comprehension ability*, Reading Research Quarterly, IV, 358, 1969. *Oscar Ozette, Assessing Reading Comprehension In Spanish as a Foreign Language, Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1974.

Two Strategies in the Teaching of Reading Comprehension 309 between the two mean scores and the standard deviation for each mean. Using a t-test for the two uncorrelated means, it was found that there was no significant difference between the gain of the traditional-frontal group and the gain of the self-test group in either the 1976-7 study (t-test = 0 066) or the 1977-8 study (t-test = 0-423). Conclusion and discussion Although the sample might be considered small, the students were typical of the general student population; they came from all departments and had differing abilities. It does not seem likely that results would have differed with a larger sampling. However, are teachers truly able to implement specified and different strategies in an objective way? This is a problem whenever method is involved because it is always difficult to standardize teachers' behavior (Travers, 1973).6 Although every effort was made by the participating teachers to distinguish and implement the two methods clearly, it is still difficult to be certain that the two methods were always presented as conceived. In spite of these considerations certain results are worth noting: 1. In these two independent studies, undertaken over a two-year period, it was consistently found that there was no significant difference between the gain in the level of achievement of students taught by the traditional-frontal method and the gain in the level of achievement of students taught by the self-test method. 2. Although there is no significant difference between the gains resulting from each of. the two methods, there is a very small positive tendency for the self-test group to show a slightly higher improvement. The findings of past research as well as of that reported above lead us to question whether there is any strategy that can yield a significantly higher level of reading achievement in a foreign language. Further, is method a truly crucial factor ? While there are a number of very important questions still unanswered, there is no doubt that this area of foreign-language teaching demands further and persistent study.
(The author wishes to thank Mrs Betty Rozen and Mrs Miriam Widmann for their co-operation in this study.) Robert M. W. Travers, cd., Second Handbook of Research on Teaching, Rand McNally College Publishing Company, 1973, p. 169.

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