Integrating Emailing Tasks into EFL Reading Comprehension Classrooms

Abstract

This study investigated the efficacy of integrating emailing tasks into EFL pre-intermediate reading classrooms. While students in experimental groups were provided with ten passages (ten tasks for each passage) through emails during 15 sessions of instruction, control groups were treated through similar passages and tasks in print. The instruments implemented were (a) Interchange/Passages Objective Placement Test C (IPOPT/C) (70 items) as the homogenizing test, (b) an Information Technology (IT) Inventory (58 items); and (c) a teacher-made posttest (30 items) including two sections of seen (10 tasks) and unseen (20 tasks) passages. Results showed a significant difference between students' performances on IPOPT/C (reading section) and the seen section of the posttest in emailing groups and those in control groups (p=0.05). Findings, however, revealed no significant difference between both groups' performances in unseen section of the posttest. As the results of this study show, designing effective emailing tasks can contribute to the improvement of second language reading comprehension ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]