Developing English Reading Comprehension Ability of EFL Undergraduate Students through the KWL-Plus Technique

Abstract

The purposes of this research were: 1) to investigate the extent to which KWL- Plus technique can help first-year students at a private university in Bangkok Metropolitan area to read more effectively, 2) to explore the students’ attitudes towards learning reading through the use of the KWL- Plus technique. The research participants were 30 first-year students derived by convenience sampling based on the class assigned to the researcher by the university registrar’s office at Thai-Nichi Institute of Technology. KWL– Plus technique was used with the subject group over eight-week period. The instruments used were lesson plans, an English reading comprehension test and the questionnaire of attitudes towards learning through the KWL - Plus technique. The study employed mean difference, standard deviation. The researcher administered the English reading comprehension test before and after teaching, the pre-test and post-test scores of the group were compared using t-test dependent measure. The findings of the study were as follows: 1) The KWL- Plus technique enabled the students to gain English comprehension. The students’ post-test scores after they were exposed to the technique were statistically higher than their pre-test ones, at a 0.01 level. 2) As to their attitudes towards the KWL- Plus technique, the findings indicated that most students expressed positive attitudes towards learning English reading through the use of the KWL- Plus technique.