The effects of question generating strategy instruction on EFL freshmen’s reading comprehension and use of English tenses

Abstract

       This quasi-experimental study was conducted to find out if the instruction of a question generating strategy would help to enhance university EFL freshmen’s English reading comprehension and their ability to use English tenses. A pre-and post-test with control group design was employed. The samples, purposively selected, were 40 undergraduate students who registered for Foundation English I course during the first semester of academic year 2010. They were divided into an experimental group (n = 20) and a control group (n = 20). The data collection tools used included a pre-and post-English reading comprehension test and a pre-and post-test of English tenses. The two groups were administered the pre-tests before the experiment which lasted two weeks, and then the post-tests, upon completion of the experiment. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics including frequency, mean, and standard deviation. An independent samples t-test was used to test the hypotheses. The results were that the experimental group gained statistically higher scores from the post-tests of both reading comprehension and use of English tenses than the control group (p<.01).