The Impact of Schema Activation Strategy through Quranic Stories on Improving EFL Secondary Stage Al-Azhar Students' Reading Comprehension Skills

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of using content schema activation strategy; ' Know", "Want to know", and "Learned" (KWL) through using some Quranic stories on improving reading comprehension skills of EFL secondary stage Al-Azhar students. The study adopted the quasi-experimental design employing two groups; experimental and control. The KWL strategy was used in teaching the experimental group in the first term of the academic year (2017)(2018). A reading comprehension test was designed and validated to be used as a pre-posttest. The data of the study were analyzed statistically. Also, t. test for paired and independent groups was used to measure the statistical differences between the mean scores of the experimental group and the control group. The study indicated that there was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of students of experimental group and control group on the post administration of reading comprehension test in favor of the experimental group. The results showed that the use of KWL strategy had a significant impact on improving students' reading comprehension skills. In conclusion, the study recommended implementing other content schema activation strategies for improving Al-Azhar students' reading comprehension skills. It was also suggested that further research should be conducted related to using KWL strategy for developing other language skills such as listening and writing.

Enhancing EFL Secondary School Students’ Reading Comprehension Through Schema-building Activities

“…Figure 1. Participants' mean scores on the posttest of the overall reading comprehension and its sub-skillsThese findings are in line with those ofChe (2014),Mohammed (2018),Lailiyah, Wediyantoro and Yustisia (2019) andCho and Ma (2020) who reported that fostering text comprehension with the use of students' prior knowledge mainly by asking questions before, during and after reading provided students with the knowledge they lacked and enabled them to comprehend EFL reading passages better.Likewise, the experimental group students' progress in their abilities to identify the main idea of the reading passages, read for specific information and sequence events (literal comprehension skills) agrees withGürkan's (2012) who stated that the use of prereading activities (brainstorming, pre-questioning, scanning, skimming, clarifying, asking and answering questions) facilitated for better literal understanding of the original texts.Besides, results of the study showed significant improvement in all inferential reading skills: Inferring meaning of unknown words, inferring reference of pronouns, identifying cause and effect relationship, comparing and contrasting ideas, and predicting outcomes. This finding is consistent with Al Adl's (2008) who used previewing, prediction and questioning to improve EFL students' inferential skills.…”