Digital mind magnets as a scaffold for improving EFL online reading comprehension

Abstract

This study investigated the effectiveness of a digital mind magnet—a structured framework of pre-, during-, and post-reading strategies—designed to enhance EFL students’ online reading comprehension. Digital texts frequently encourage distraction and cursory processing, whereas the mind magnet, derived from a paper-based model (Read. Teach. 60:373–376, 2006), offers a cognitive framework that focuses learners’ attention on essential narrative elements. A quasi-experimental pretest–posttest design was utilized, assigning 60 intermediate EFL learners to either an experimental group utilizing digital mind magnets (n = 30) or a control group employing traditional methods (n = 30). A mixed-methods approach combined quantitative assessments of comprehension with qualitative evaluations of students’ written responses. ANCOVA revealed a statistically significant and large effect, F(1, 57) = 113.85, p