Türkiye'de bir yabanci diller eğitimi bölümünde okuma becerileri I dersinde gerçekleştirilen açımlama stratejisi öğretiminin öğrencilerin okuduğunu anlama becerilerine etkisi

This study aimed to instruct the experimental group in the paraphrasing strategy and to measure the effects of the instruction in the reading courses on the students? reading comprehension skills as well as to evaluate the effectiveness of the paraphrasing strategy. The study was conducted at the Department of Foreign Languages Education, Abant Izzet Baysal University, Turkey. The participants were 62 first-year students. The experimental and the control groups both consisted of 31 students. In the first phase, a Reading Comprehension Test, a Vocabulary Test, a Grammar Test and a Paraphrasing Test were administered to the groups to determine the equivalence. The instruction was implemented for 6 weeks. In the last phase, both groups took the Paraphrasing Test and the Reading Comprehension Test as posttests as well as the Specific Paraphrasing Test. According to the results, the experimental group learned how to use the strategy and outperformed the control group on the Paraphrasing Test (in the Specific Paraphrasing Test). Yet, there was no significant difference between the groups with respect to reading comprehension skills. Keywords: Paraphrasing Strategy, Reading Comprehension, Instruction, English Language Teaching (ELT)