This study investigates the relative effects of two types of input modification – linguistic and interactional – on Iranian EFL students' reading comprehension. Eight English reading passages were presented to 248 students in one of the three forms: unmodified (U), linguistically modified (LM), mostly in the direction of elaboration, and interactionally modified (IM). The students were also divided into two proficiency-level groups, i.e. more proficient (MP) and less proficient (LP) groups. Students' comprehension of the passages was measured through a 50-item multiple-choice test which was the same for all the six groups. The data were analyzed by a 2-by-3 analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results show that interactional modifications improve students' reading comprehension scores better than linguistic modifications at both proficiency levels. This suggests that linguistic modifications – even if they are made in the direction of elaboration as suggested by recent studies (Oh, 2001; Urano, 2002; Yano et al., 1994) – do not facilitate reading comprehension as effectively as interactional modifications do. Therefore, it is recommended that instead of making texts comprehensible through commonly-practiced techniques of simplification or elaboration, teachers employ authentic texts, but make them comprehensible through creating interactional modifications.
Baleghizadeh, S., Borzabadi Farahani, D. (2007). The Impact of Two Types of Input Modification on EFL Reading Comprehension: Linguistic Versus Interactiona. Teaching English Language, 1(Special Issue 1), 71-94. doi: 10.22132/tel.2006.113220
MLA
Sasan Baleghizadeh; Davood Borzabadi Farahani. "The Impact of Two Types of Input Modification on EFL Reading Comprehension: Linguistic Versus Interactiona". Teaching English Language, 1, Special Issue 1, 2007, 71-94. doi: 10.22132/tel.2006.113220
HARVARD
Baleghizadeh, S., Borzabadi Farahani, D. (2007). 'The Impact of Two Types of Input Modification on EFL Reading Comprehension: Linguistic Versus Interactiona', Teaching English Language, 1(Special Issue 1), pp. 71-94. doi: 10.22132/tel.2006.113220
VANCOUVER
Baleghizadeh, S., Borzabadi Farahani, D. The Impact of Two Types of Input Modification on EFL Reading Comprehension: Linguistic Versus Interactiona. Teaching English Language, 2007; 1(Special Issue 1): 71-94. doi: 10.22132/tel.2006.113220