engleski

Effects of searching for rhetorical relations on university-level text comprehension in L2

Establishing relations between concepts and ideas is vital for university-level reading. However, students often understand expository text only superficially (Graesser, 2007), especially in the case of a second language (L2). Insufficiently developed linguistic competence, inadequate prior knowledge or weaker reading skills may all lead to a lack of deep comprehension. Our aim was to examine the effects of a macrostructure-based reading strategy of searching for rhetorical relations on the comprehension of a text in English as L2. A quasi-experimental study was conducted in which junior undergraduate students of business and economics were trained to establish the rhetorical structure of an expository text (c. 900 words). During reading, students were required to make graphically organized notes with explicit rhetorical relations, write linear-text summaries and answer comprehension questions. Analysis of the students' notes and summaries showed the positive effects of the training on knowledge construction and text integration (e.g., relevance, coherence, accurate rhetorical relations). Some aspects of note accuracy were negatively affected, and no effects were found on note completeness, local summary accuracy and answers to comprehension questions. The results indicate that the applied strategy significantly enhances macroprocessing leading to text integration. The revealed comprehension gaps point to the need to avoid the mechanical application of the strategy and a loss of detail in locally-oriented tasks.

text comprehension, macrostructure, reading strategy, rhetorical relations, graphic organizers, L2

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