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