ERIC Number: EJ899489
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2007
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0379-0037
EISSN: N/A
How Consciousness-Raising Affects Intonation and Facilitates Reading Comprehension
Shariati, Mohammad
Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics, v33 n1 p121-134 Jan-Jun 2007
This paper reports on an investigation about the relation between a student's conscious awareness of the structure of a sentence and the degree of his/her intonation accuracy as well as his/her reading comprehension. The research was done based on the hypothesis that: "if the students are made conscious of the infrastructure of lengthy sentences i.e., of subject and predicate division and of the relative and other WH-clauses, they are more likely to read the sentences correctly and with greater comprehension. To examine the validity of the hypothesis, different groups of ESP students of different years were observed at Shahid Bahonar university of Kerman. They were, first, taught how to divide a sentence into subject and predicate and also about the form and function of WH-clauses. Next, the application of the student's knowledge of sentence was examined whenever one of them seemed unable to read a sentence correctly. At this point, the student was asked to show the borderline between the subject and the predicate by identifying the verb at the beginning of the predicate. The next thing to do was to ask the student to read the sentence again. If he/she succeeded to read the sentence with the correct intonation, then he/she would be asked to translate it into L1. In case there were words that were unfamiliar to the student, they were ignored and the main idea of the sentence would suffice. At last, the cross-tabulations of their immediate response to consciousness-raising with reading comprehension and intonation showed a 100% of improvement. This hypothesis proved the hypothesis. (Contains 6 tables.)
Descriptors: Reading Comprehension, Sentence Structure, Intonation, Form Classes (Languages), Vocabulary Development, Consciousness Raising, Metalinguistics, English for Special Purposes, Second Language Learning, Foreign Countries, College Students, Second Language Instruction, Translation, Language Acquisition, Linguistic Theory
Bahri Publications. 1749A/5 1st Floor, Govindpuri Exension, Kalkaji, New Delhi, 110019 India. Tel: +91-011-65810766; e-mail: bahrius@vsnl.com
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Iran
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A