The Effects Of Discourse Structure Graphic Organizers On Students’ Reading Comprehensionat Junior High School

Reading occupies a very important position in the second language teaching and learning. For many junior high school students, they find it difficult to understand the complicated reading materials which contain many long and complex sentences. Therefore, it is necessary to find more efficient ways to improve students’ reading comprehension. Recently, many researchers find that by using discourse structure graphic organizers (DSGOs) in the reading can facilitate students’ comprehension of the texts. This has been empirically supported by many researches conducted with first language learners. However, few studies explore the effects of the use of the DSGOs on junior high school students’reading comprehension in second language context.The present study mainly explored the effects of DSGOs on junior high school students’reading comprehension. It intended to discuss the following three research questions:(1)What are the effects of DSGO training on junior high school students’ reading comprehension in the immediate-post test? (2)Is there a long-term effect of DSGO training on junior high school students’reading comprehension? (3)What are the attitudes of junior high school students towards the use of DSGOs in the reading?A total of 74 students from Hangzhou Wenhai Middle School participated in this study. They were divided into experimental group and control group. General reading comprehension test and DSGO completion test were used in the pretest, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test. First, all the participants took the pretest. Then, participants of experimental group started to receive a four-week DSGO training while those of control group received the traditional way of teaching. After the training, all the participants were asked to finish the immediate post-test. One week later, a delayed post-test was conducted to examine the long-term effects of DSGO training. Meanwhile, participants in the experimental group were asked to complete an attitude questionnaire at the end of the study. The data collected from the research were then analyzed through SPSS 16.0.After analyzing the results in the current study, the following conclusions are achieved:first, DSGO training had positive effects on junior school students’reading comprehension. It significantly improved students’reading comprehension as measured by general reading comprehension test and DSGO completion test. Second, although the positive effects of DSGO training on students’reading comprehension remained one week after the training, it gradually declined from immediate post-test to delayed post-test. Finally, the overall attitudes of students towards the use of DSGOs were positive and most of them hoped the DSGOs can be used in their daily English reading class.According to the findings in this study, several implications about learning and teaching of English reading were put forward. The limitations of current study as well as the suggestions for the further research were also provided at the end of the thesis.