The sustainability effects of two reading interventions on Saudi nursing students’ comprehension of scientific research

Abstract

Background Scientific literature is presented in complex language, most frequently in English, and includes technical jargon that represents a challenge to comprehension of an English as a foreign language (EFL) nursing student. Yet scientific literature is a powerful and trustworthy source of evidence to guide nursing practice. Purpose The aim is to examine two reading interventions (Translation vs Synthesization) and to determine which one produces long-term sustainability effects in scientific research reading comprehension. Method A two-group posttest-only randomized comparative design was used in which 120 participants were randomly assigned to two groups. Several instruments were used to collect the data. Results Study findings showed that the synthesization group significantly produced better results when compared with the translation group on both the immediate (p = 0.01) and the delayed (p = 0.013) reading comprehension tests. It shows also that gender differences have a significant impact on reading comprehension with a favor to males in the long-term reading comprehension outcome (p = 0.038) of synthesization and females in the short-term reading comprehension outcome (p = 0.015) of translation. English proficiency was significant with determination, metacognitive, and social skills in the synthesization group (p = 0.00, p = 0.01, p = 0.007 respectively). Conclusion The results suggested that synthesization could be an effective reading approach in improving EFL nursing students’ reading comprehension of scientific literature.