On the Screen or Printed: a Case of EFL Learners’ Online and Offline Reading the Press

Ali Rahimi*, Fatemeh Behjat**
* Department of English, Faculty of Humanities, University of Kashan, Kashan, Iran.
** Islamic Azad University, Abadeh Branch, Abadeh, Iran.
Periodicity:April - June'2011
DOI : https://doi.org/10.26634/jelt.1.2.1456

Abstract

A growing body of investigations on second language teaching and learning is now being devoted to the international use of network information and communication technology known as e-learning. Individualized self-paced e-learning offline and online are two of the common e-learning modalities used by language teachers and learners (Romiszowski (2004). Since one of the aspects of language learning is reading comprehension, this study aimed at finding out whether online or offline reading materials could make a significant difference in the comprehension of English or not. For this purpose, a number of 85 EFL students at Islamic Azad University, Abadeh and Shiraz Branch were selected. After they were proved to be homogeneous through a reading comprehension pre-test, they were divided into two groups; one of them was assigned the already printed materials selected from the online pages of different newspapers for their reading comprehension practice, whereas the second group was given the homepage of the same online-paper pages to surf the net and read online. After a period of three months, the same reading comprehension test used in the pre-test was administered to both groups as the pos-test. The results showed that with the same hypertexts, learners who read online were able to improve their reading comprehension more and outperformed the other group. This implies that since online reading gives the learners a better opportunity to use related links on the page, they are exposed to more reading materials and accordingly can enhance their comprehension better.

Keywords

Online And Offline Hypertexts, Reading Comprehension, Reading Foreign Language Newspapers, Foreign Language Learning.

How to Cite this Article?

Rahimi, A., and Behjat, F. (2011). On The Screen Or Printed: A Case Of EFL Learners' Online And Offline Reading The Press. i-manager’s Journal on English Language Teaching, 1(2), 5-26. https://doi.org/10.26634/jelt.1.2.1456

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