Using transactional strategies to improve English reading comprehension and summary writing abilities of students in English for arts and design course

Abstract

Reading and summary writing skills are tools which learners use to explore the realm of knowledge as they are required to read more English content and write in English at university level. Hence, there should be a teaching method which helps them understand what they are reading, summarize what they have read. The current research was conducted to compare studentss' English reading and summary writing abilities before and after being taught through transactional strategies and study the opinions of students on learning with transactional strategies. The target group was 62 Fine Arts students, enrolled in English for Art and Design course in the second semester of the academic year 2010 at a private university. The instruments consisted of the reading comprehension tests, summary writing tests which were administered to the students before and after the experiment and an opinion questionnaire. Data were analyzed by using mean, standard deviation and percentage. The findings revealed that after the students learned through transactional strategies, their English reading and summary writing abilities were higher than those before learning. It was found that 90.3% of the students had higher language competency than the set criterion. In addition, the students expressed a high level of opinion towards this learning. © 2012 Asian Network for Scientific Information.