The Effects of Web-based Text Structure Strategy on Adult Chinese ELLs' Reading Strategies and Reading Comprehension

Abstract

The inability to develop reading comprehension skills can limit academic success across many fields, especially for English Language Learners (ELLs). The current study investigated whether the structure strategy, delivered through the Intelligent Tutoring of Structure Strategy (ITSS) to adult Chinese ELLs, can improve students’ reading strategies, thus improving their reading comprehension. With a quasi-experimental nonequivalent control group design, 207 adult Chinese ELLs from four classes were assigned to experimental or comparison groups. The experimental group utilized the ITSS to support their English reading instruction, whereas the comparison group used traditional instruction. My results indicated that the ITSS intervention had a statistically significant positive effect on adult Chinese ELLs’ reading comprehension (β=3.07, p< 0.001) with Cohen’s d = 0.43 on College English Test-4 (CET-4). Furthermore, I found that Chinese ELLs reported using more higher-order reading strategies (p< 0.01) after the intervention. However, there was no significant change in reported reading strategies in the comparison group between pretest and post-test. The current study did not provide evidence that the change of reading strategies mediated the relationship between the intervention/control condition and Chinese ELLs’ reading comprehension.