matched with the same teacher. For this reason, the results of the quantitative analysis will be presented for the first pair, namely experimental I and control II, first, and then the results for the second pair, experimental II and control I, will be presented.
In order to be able to explore whether explicit strategy instruction in
contextual inferencing strategies had an impact on the participants‟ attitudes towards reading, first the paired groups were compared in terms of their pre-questionnaire means in order to be able to see whether they were similar prior to the strategy instruction. Then, paired samples t-tests were performed to compare each group‟s pre- and post-questionnaires, and independent t-tests were run to compare the attitudes of experimental and control groups.
Experimental I and Control II
These two groups were compared in terms of their existing attitudes towards reading; their overall and categorical mean scores from the pre-questionnaire are presented in the table below:
Table 9- Comparison, experimental I and control II, pre-questionnaire
As is clear from the table, the attitudes of the students in these two groups are quite similar to each other. In other words, the students in both the experimental I and control II groups seem to have neutral attitudes towards reading in English. This was supported by the fact that the independent samples t-tests did not reveal a significant difference between the attitudes of the participants in experimental I and control II groups.
The participants in the first experimental group were compared in terms of their pre- and post-training questionnaires in order to find out whether there is a significant difference between the two sets of data. Table 10 below presents their overall mean scores as well as the mean scores by categories for both questionnaires:
Experimental I Control II Independent Samples t- test Category M Std. D. M Std. D. Sig.(2-tailed) Joy of reading 3.39 .73 3.51 .52 .558 Self-efficacy 2.98 .68 2.99 .56 .979 Importance of reading 4.14 .47 4.25 .42 .444 Personal investment 2.25 .66 2.62 .76 .107 Vocabulary in reading 2.74 .92 2.79 .92 .872 Overall 3.21 .58 3.33 .48 .484
Table 10- Overall and category means, pre- and post-questionnaires, experimental I
Category Pre-questionnaire Post-questionnaire
Paired samples t-test N M Std. D. N M Std. D. Sig.(2-tailed) joy of reading 22 3.39 .92 20 3.28 .88 .832 self-efficacy 22 2.98 .68 20 2.91 .86 .681 importance of reading 22 4.14 .45 20 3.87 .88 .245 personal investment 22 2.25 .66 20 2.51 .89 .100 vocabulary in reading 22 2.74 .92 20 2.66 1.0 .832 Overall 22 3.18 .60 20 3.13 .73 .881
As Table 10 demonstrates, the categorical and overall means of the students in the first experimental group appear not to have changed much from the pre- to post-questionnaire. Similar to the pre-questionnaire, the highest mean score in the post-questionnaire belongs to the importance of reading category again. The students have the lowest scores in the personal investment category in the post-questionnaire, as they also did in the pre-questionnaire. The similar mean scores in both
questionnaires are also confirmed by the paired samples t-tests, which revealed that the students did not experience any significant changes in their attitudes after they received strategy training. When this result is taken into consideration, it is possible to say that the students in the experimental I group do not appear to have been affected by the strategy training they received with regard to their attitudes.
As the next step, the same procedure was carried out for the control II group. Paired samples t-tests were conducted in order to compare their mean scores for the pre- and post-questionnaires. The pre-and post-questionnaire means, and the results
of the paired samples t-tests run on the overall and categorical means are presented in Table 11 below:
Table 11- Overall and categorical means, pre- and post-questionnaires, control II Pre- questionnaire Post- questionnaire Paired Samples T-test Category N M Std. D. N M Std. D. Sig.(2-tailed) joy of reading 17 3.51 .52 15 3.36 .62 .062* SE=.087 t (14)=2.03 self-efficacy 17 2.99 .56 15 2.85 .79 .152 importance of reading 17 4.25 .42 15 4.14 .44 .086* SE=.115 t(14)=1.84 personal investment 17 2.62 .76 15 2.57 .77 .297 vocabulary in reading 17 2.79 .92 15 3.03 .96 .264 Overall 17 3.30 .49 15 3.29 .58 .357 *= approaching significance
As it is clear in Table 11, the overall and categorical mean scores of the students in the second control group are quite similar in the two questionnaires. Similar to the experimental I group, the students in this group also have the highest means in the importance of reading category, and the lowest means in the personal investment category. However, their means in the importance of reading and joy of reading categories appear to have decreased slightly when compared to their means in the pre-questionnaire. The differences between the pre- and post-questionnaire means were checked through paired samples t-tests and the results indicated that the differences were non-significant, which suggests that the students in the control II group did not change their attitudes from pre- to post-questionnaire. However, the
differences in the joy of reading and importance of reading categories were
approaching significance, suggesting a trend towards a decrease in these categories over the treatment period.
The tables above displayed the comparison of the participants in the first experimental and second control groups in respect to how the attitudes of the
students in each condition group may have changed over the treatment period. As the third step, these two groups were compared to see if there were any significant differences between the means of these two condition groups in the post-
questionnaire with regard to their attitudes towards reading in English. Table 12 shows the overall and categorical means for each group and the results of the independent samples t-test:
Table 12- Comparison, experimental I and control II, post-questionnaire
Experimental I Control II Independent Samples t-test Category M Std. D. M Std. D. Sig.(2-tailed) Joy of reading 3.28 .88 3.36 .62 .770 Self-efficacy 2.91 .86 2.85 .79 .832 Importance of reading 3.87 .88 4.14 .44 .234 Personal investment 2.51 .89 2.57 .77 .833 Vocabulary in reading 2.66 1.0 3.04 .96 .269 Overall 3.13 .73 3.29 .58 .478
As illustrated in Table 12, the overall post-questionnaire mean scores of the experimental I and control II groups seem to be somewhat similar to each other. This was confirmed by the independent samples t-test, which showed that there was no significant difference between the experimental I and control II groups after the
three-week treatment period for the experimental group. Moving from this, it can be said that the explicit strategy training in contextual inferencing strategies does not appear to have had a significant influence on the attitudes of the participants in the experimental I group.
Having examined the first pair of the condition groups, the same analysis procedures were conducted to evaluate the case in the second pair of condition groups, namely experimental II and control I groups.