Effects of Different Culturally-Based Materials on EFL Learners’ Reading Anxiety, Reading Self- Efficacy, and Reading Proficiency in Project-Based Classes مقاله

چکیده:

This article sets out to examine the effect of utilizing different culturally-based materials on EFL university students' foreign language reading anxiety, reading comprehension self-efficacy, and reading proficiency within project-based classes. The research was carried out with two classes of intermediate freshmen majoring in English Language Teaching. The comparison group had to present their projects based on the reading passages of the book "Active" (L2 culturally-oriented texts) and the experimental group had to deliver their projects based on their L1 and L2 culturally-based reading texts designed by the researcher. Reading comprehension self-efficacy scale, foreign language reading anxiety scale, and the reading section of the Michigan Test (1998) were administered to students as pre-tests and post-tests at the beginning and at the end of one academic year consisting of two project-based reading courses. ANCOVA was utilized for analyzing the data. The results indicated that although in both groups significant improvements were observed regarding the three aforementioned variables, it was the experimental group that showed significantly less degrees of anxiety, compared to the comparison group. However, no differences regarding reading self-efficacy and reading proficiency were observed between the two groups. The findings of this study suggest that EFL teachers, material developers and syllabus designers can take advantage of cultural familiar texts when generating their own learning materials.

خلاصه ماشینی:

Candidate, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran <H5>Zohreh Nafissi</H5> Assistance Professor, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran Received: December 28, 2016; Accepted: April 12, 2017 Abstract This article sets out to examine the effect of utilizing different culturally-basedmaterials on EFL university students' foreign language reading anxiety, reading comprehension self-efficacy, and reading proficiency within project-based classes. Therefore, many researchers have claimed that PBL does have constructive influences specifically on EFL students' reading comprehension abilities and achievements (Chu, Tse, Loh, & Chow, 2011; Kavlu, 2015; Lindsay & Knight, 2006; Othman & Ahmad Shah, 2013; Schunk & Rice, 1993; Soleimani, Rahimi, & Sadeghi, 2015). However, the remaining question, which has not been investigated thoroughly up to now, is what role, if any, different culturally-based materials can play in project-based reading classes and what might their effects be on EFL students' foreign language reading anxiety, reading comprehension self-efficacy, and reading proficiency. With this presupposition in mind and after consulting ten experienced instructors in teaching reading skill at university, the researcher opted for the book "Active 3" with the Flesch Reading Ease Score of 50-59 based on the first, middle, and last lessons of the book (All the texts, whether assigned by the teacher or selected by the students, in both comparison and experimental classes in the first reading course were to be calibrated at this level of difficulty). <H3>Data Analysis</H3> For the purpose of investigating the effect of utilizing different culturally-based materials (as the independent variable) on TEFL students' foreign language reading anxiety (FLRA), reading comprehension self-efficacy (RCS), and reading proficiency (RP) (as the three dependent variables) within project-based classes, three one-way between groups analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) were applied.

کلیدواژه ها:

foreign language reading anxiety ، Reading Proficiency ، culturally-oriented texts ، reading comprehension self-efficacy ، project-based learning